Book Review: Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Book 2)
Carl Still Doesn't Have Long Pants
The second rule of Dungeon Crawler Carl is that every problem Carl solves creates a worse problem. The first rule is that Carl will always try to solve the problem anyway. There is no third rule.
I finished the first book in the six-book series and immediately started this one.
The premise continues to be ridiculous: An alien corporation, Borant, destroys every human-made structure on Earth and repurposes the debris into an 18-level underground dungeon that spans the globe. Roughly 13 million humans (crawlers) survive and find their way into the dungeon’s first level; conscripted into a world-wide D&D game broadcast across the galaxy for alien entertainment. It’s The Hunger Games crossed with The Running Man crossed with World of Warcraft.
In book 2, The Royal Court of Princess Donut consists of
Donut
Carl (Still without long pants).
Mongo the Velociraptor
Mordecai (Donut’s manager)
Katia Grim (a doppelganger separated from her “Brynhild’s Daughters” team)
The team stumbles into two quests and Carl learns something new about the game mechanics. He realizes that his team can do more than fight and kill mobs (monsters). They can also manipulate the system. The dungeon’s entertainment machinery has talk shows and non-player character (NPC) Elite Dramas (fully scripted, separately produced shows running inside the dungeon with its own writers, producers, and contractual obligations). It reminds me a bit of the HBO TV show Westworld. Savvy crawlers can threaten popular story arcs and bargain with the people producing the shows. Carl struck a deal with the Circus Quest writing team through Zev (a Borant PR manager for popular crawlers) where he would get to live and give them a better ending to their story.
By the end of the book, the Royal Court of Princess Donut has survived an eight-day floor timer, completed two quests, solved a murder mystery, saved thousands of NPCs and dozens of crawlers from a city-destroying explosion, and are in the top 10 of the crawler leaderboard. Carl and Donut have active bounties on their heads, and Carl is carrying an unstable super-weapon he can never safely use or discard. The Skull Empire is actively hostile to the group following Carl’s inflammatory political statements on a talk show, and Carl has a binding future commitment to appear on the “Vengeance of the Daughter” Elite Drama on Floor 6.
Carl's negotiated solution reversed a planned story arc in which the explosion was supposed to kill everyone. Because the team was so successful, the game’s AI driven loot system authorized the delivery of 83 Celestial boxes to all surviving crawlers involved, which would have bankrupted Borant (already strapped for cash.) Borant chose to use its contracted once-per-season veto to strip the team of their rightfully earned rewards. Call me crazy, but I’m thinking that the impact of Carl’s script change will come back to bite him in future books.
At the beginning of Book 2, there were ~3 million humans (crawlers) alive in the dungeon. By the end though, the dungeon has caused brutal attrition; somewhere below 600,000. Despite that one stark fact, the book is still funny, well written, and well acted. I’m totally enjoying myself.
Book three (The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook (2021), here I come.
Source
Matt Dinniman, 2021. Carl’s Doomsday Scenario (Book 2) [Book]. Goodreads, URL: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212393364-carl-s-doomsday-scenario
References
Matt Dinniman (Author), Jeff Hays (Narrator), 2021. Dungeon Crawler Carl [Audio Book]. Soundbooth Theater - Audible, URL: <https://www.audible.com/pd/Dungeon-Crawler-Carl-Audiobook/B08V8B2CGV
Rick Howard, 2026. Dungeon Crawler Carl [Book Review]. First Principles Newsletter (Substack), URL: https://diffuser.substack.com/p/book-review-dungeon-crawler-carl