I round up my LitRPG picks of 2022, folding in the end of 2021 because that’s when it all started: the first three Dungeon Crawler Carl books, a man and his ex-girlfriend’s show cat trying to survive an eighteen-floor dungeon that’s also a galactic reality show. I also look back at the older LitRPG I still rate, Life in the North, Land of the Undying and Legend of the Arch Magus.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is the one I’d start anybody on, a 10 out of 10 and the best LitRPG I’ve read in years, and Books 2 and 3 each got an 8. It’s the rare series I’d recommend to people who don’t even like LitRPG.
These are my LitRPG picks of 2022, and they’re really one series. I started Dungeon Crawler Carl at the end of 2021 and had the next two books done by the end of January, so I’ve folded those last few months of 2021 in here rather than give them a list of their own. Every pick below comes from a review I’d already written on the blog by the end of 2022. I’ve been reading LitRPG for a while now, and a lot of it follows the same handful of formulas, which is fine but does get a bit frustrating when they’re all so much alike. Dungeon Crawler Carl doesn’t. It keeps all the machinery, the levels, the classes, the loot boxes, and then does something with it that I hadn’t seen before. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny, which is the rarest thing in the genre. If you want the earlier list for this genre, my LitRPG picks of 2020 are here.
I did these on audio, and the first one I listened to on a long car drive with my son, fully expecting to zone out. Instead we both sat in the driveway after we’d arrived because we couldn’t stop. It’s now his favorite series by a mile, and I get it. There’s a short section at the end on the older LitRPG books I still go back to, because they’re the ones that got me hooked on the genre in the first place, and they’re the yardstick for everything here. But the bulk of this list is Carl, Donut and a dungeon run by the most passive-aggressive AI I’ve ever come across, and I’m not sorry about that at all.
The one I’d start with: Dungeon Crawler Carl
Dungeon Crawler Carl has an all-timer of a premise. One night every man-made structure on Earth collapses at once, and almost everyone who was indoors goes with it. Carl survives because he’s out in a freezing parking lot in his boxer shorts and a pair of boots, chasing his ex-girlfriend’s prize-winning show cat, Princess Donut, who bolted. Then a voice from the sky announces that Earth has been repossessed by a galactic corporation, that the planet is being turned into an eighteen-floor dungeon, and that the survivors are now contestants in the most popular reality show in the known universe. Enter the dungeon or die on the surface. I gave it 10 out of 10, and I don’t hand those out lightly.
The dungeon’s AI is my favorite thing in it. It narrates everything in a snarky, corporate-HR voice that treats the mass death of humanity as a content opportunity, announcing achievements like a game show host and casualty figures like a terms-of-service update. It’s a running gag that turns into the book’s sharpest weapon, poking at reality TV, influencer culture and the way an audience will cheer for anything if it’s packaged right, and it never once feels preachy because it’s too busy being hilarious. Carl is the anchor, a former Coast Guard who’s practical, stubborn and completely uninterested in being anyone’s entertainment. Donut is a pampered Persian who learns to talk and gets an ego to match, and there were moments I could have used slightly less diva, but by the end I’d stopped rolling my eyes and started rooting for her. And Mongo is a velociraptor. What more do you want?
Books 2 and 3: bigger floors, meaner games
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario had the problem every second book has, which is that the premise isn’t a surprise any more. Dinniman’s answer is to widen the lens. The third floor is the Over City, packed with NPCs who are effectively starring in their own TV shows, and the Desperado Club turns up as a bar, casino and neutral ground between floors where the whole galaxy comes to watch, drink and gossip. That’s the best addition in the book, and it’s where the world really starts to breathe. It’s busier and messier than the first, with a murder clown circus, a murder investigation among bird-people and rival crawlers all juggled at once, and a couple of threads feel like they’re there to show off the sandbox. I gave it 8 out of 10, a notch below the debut, but it’s the book that convinced me the series had real staying power.
The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook is where it turned into a genuine obsession for me. The fourth floor is the Iron Tangle, every underground rail system on Earth ripped up and tied into a knot, and it’s my favorite floor concept in the series so far, because the puzzle is the danger. Carl gets hold of a hidden manual for sabotaging the dungeon, invisible to the viewers and the producers, and he has to make every breakthrough look like his own improvisation. That’s the moment I fully bought him as a threat rather than a survivor. Katia joins the crew and quickly became one of my favorite additions, and for once the crawlers mostly work together instead of killing each other. The geography gets fuzzy in places and there’s still a little Donut fatigue, so it’s another 8, but it’s the book that turned my enjoyment into full-on devotion.
Carried over: the LitRPG that got me here
A few older books are still the measuring stick. Life in the North, the first System Apocalypse book, was one of the earliest LitRPG books I read and quite possibly the one that got me hooked on the genre, and I’ve read it several times since. John Lee is camping in the Yukon when Earth becomes a dungeon world and monsters start spawning all around him, and the elves, orcs and minotaurs turn out to be alien species who’ve chosen Earth as a new home. The LitRPG side is more SciFi than fantasy, lasers and machines as well as monsters, and John even ends up in a mecha suit with real Iron Man overtones. I’ll admit I skip a lot of the character sheet counting, but it doesn’t take me out of the story much. Dungeon Crawler Carl is meaner and funnier, but they’re clearly cousins.
Land of the Undying struck me as different from the usual escape-into-the-game formula, because its two leads have a real life outside the game as well as in it, and their romance grows in both. The growth in their abilities is nice and realistic without too many windfalls, though both of them are a bit too competent in real life. Legend of the Arch Magus turned out not to be LitRPG at all once I got into it, more a wizard waking up thousands of years later in the body of a spoiled noble, and he’s a bit overpowered, but it’s a good, uncomplicated listen with plenty of world-building and a couple of big mysteries. The narration was good too, with every character easy to recognise, even if they’re fairly one-dimensional, good guys good and bad guys bad.
Why it works so well on audio
I have to talk about the narration, because it’s one of the best audiobook performances I’ve ever heard. Jeff Hays and the Soundbooth Theater crew don’t so much read these books as cast them. Carl’s weary rasp, Donut’s imperious drawl, Mordecai’s growl and that pitch-perfect corporate lilt for the AI announcements are all distinct enough that you never lose track of who’s talking, even on a floor packed with clowns, bird-people and talk show hosts. Donut’s voice in particular is a small miracle of comic timing. The Iron Tangle could have been a nightmare to follow by ear, and they still kept the geography clear and the ever-growing cast separate, which is no small thing three books in. Mordecai is the former crawler turned guide who teaches them the rules of a rigged game, and that growl suits him perfectly.
But I want to be clear that the performance lifts books that are already great. Strip the narration away and you’ve still got a razor-sharp story with a real progression system, real stakes and a real point of view, and the progression is crunchy enough that the numbers actually mean something. The world beyond the dungeon, the sponsors, the producers and the galactic viewers placing bets and sending gifts, is sketched just enough to make you feel watched, which is the whole point. It’s brutal, people die badly and often, but it’s also unexpectedly warm, and that whiplash between gut-punch and belly-laugh is the whole trick. If you only pick up one LitRPG book off the back of this list, make it the first Dungeon Crawler Carl. It’s the rare series I’d recommend to people who don’t even like LitRPG, and you’ll end up shoving it at people too.
Have you read Dungeon Crawler Carl, and do you think the narration makes it? Tell me in the comments.