Published: September 24, 2024
Publisher: Ace
Series: Dungeon Crawler Carl #2
Genre: Fantasy, LitRPG
Pages: 384 (Hardcover)
My Rating: 4 Stars
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis:
“The training levels have concluded. Now the games may truly begin.”
The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can’t get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive.
They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose.
Carl still has no pants.
They call it Dungeon Crawler World. For Carl and Donut, it’s anything but a game.
Carl and Donut, having gained fame and popularity on the first two floors of the dungeon, have now moved on to the third floor, thus continuing their deadly gauntlet. Carl and Donut now have the chance to pick what race and class they’d like to be, which is a tougher decision than one might think. Stay the same or gain some powerful advantages without risking the wrath of their growing number of fans? Though I would have previously said I wasn’t a big LitRPG fan, I find that I love the thought of video game min/maxing in a book.
The third floor is still early in the dungeon and our destructive duo are still learning mechanics and running into new things. They now have Mordecai as Donut’s manager, which is theoretically going to be super helpful, but he can’t stop getting wasted in every safe room. Oh, and now quests are a thing. They can be accidentally or intentionally picked up, and fortunately, sometimes avoided. Unfortunately for Carl and Donut (and Mongo the velociraptor), they’ve been forced into quite a complicated quest – they have to help an elf woman destroy the cursed circus at the heart of the third level and its dangerous denizens.
A good portion of this story is figuring out quest mechanics and how crawlers should or shouldn’t interact with powerful NPCs throughout the levels. Mordecai’s insider knowledge of dungeon mechanics also gives some useful insights on the major quest storylines and how the writers behind the scenes steer things to keep what is essentially their show on the air. The rest is Carl, Donut, and Mongo leveling up and almost getting blown to smithereens on a disturbing number of occasions.
This installment is short in comparison to the first and third volumes, but has a ton of new information about the dungeon as our characters are now officially out of the ‘training’ levels. This was an entertaining thrill ride from start to finish and I won’t be waiting long to pick up the third installment, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook. This is a great blend of humor and action, with enough heartfelt moments sprinkled in to keep things balanced. Also, Carl is three levels in and still running around with no pants – seems the viewers and the dungeon AI like it that way.
Powder & Page 
I’ve been trying to read the first book all month but my reading plans didn’t work out so well, lol. Glad the second book was fun!
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