Dungeon Crawler Carl, by Matt Dinniman

Book 26 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! Still comfortably ahead with my reading. My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there. In my reading and blog writing, I tend to focus on lesser known authors and books and shy away from the mega bestsellers. Part of this is as “service”: I like to highlight things that people are less likely to have seen. Part of it however is just my own aversion to join the “hype” in a popular work! This is part of why it took me until 2024 to finally read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. But I became curious about Dungeon Crawler Carl, a now lengthy series of novels by Matt Dinniman named after the first book that came out in 2020. I wasn’t necessarily expecting to get drawn into it, but I was really won over by the story, which went in directions and had more depth than I anticipated! The book is set on present day Earth. Carl runs outside in a winter storm to try to…