“We teleported straight from the greenroom to a long golden hallway reminiscent of the first hallway we had entered.”
-Matt Dinniman, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, First Line
Okay, not the most fun first line, but this is a sequel and I feel like you aren’t necessarily trying to hook someone from the beginning to stick with it. But here we are! Book 2 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
Lets get into the data!
- Author: Matt Dinniman
- Genre: Science Fiction, Comedy, Death Game, Fantasy, Adventure
- Spice: Not unless you count explosions
- Trigger Warnings: Mostly violence but nothing listed in the book.
- Pages: 351
- Published: 2021
- Publisher: Ace
- Series: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 2
- Goodreads Rating: 4.53
- StoryGraph Rating: 4.38
Alright. A spoiler free review of the second book in a series. How difficult could that possibly be? Right? Right?!
Anyways. If you’re looking for a different formula in the second book, then you might as well just walk away right now. Don’t bother. The formula is the same and (in my humble opinion) that is just perfect. The humor and hijinks that I loved in the first book continues with this one. We are finding ourselves getting more into the emotions and psychological impact of this type of situation that our characters are thrust into. We are learning more about Carl’s background and we are seeing his relationship with Princess Donut blossom and evolve (not in a weird way okay!). We are also getting more glimpses into the company running the show and what it’s like for other planets and races who have experienced the same situation as earth. Just little nuggets here and there.
This book is, if I’m remembering correctly, the shortest one in the series so far. Honestly, it feels like it was over too quickly in some ways. I actually wanted a bit more out of the story this go around and felt like I got a few side quests but left the main quest on the backburner. I’m no stranger to ignoring the main quest (I’ve played a lot of Bethesda games) but in this instance I wanted a bit more. The sides quests are interesting and fun to read, but I just wanted a bit more towards the meat of the whole thing. We will have to see if that comes next.
Now, if you’ve never had a flaming, skull faced bear on roller skates carreling at you at full speed, you don’t know what you’re missing.
Matt Dinniman, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, pg 107
I honestly don’t have a ton to tell you about the second book. I truly believe if you like the first one, you’ll like this one. I have seen some people complain that it’s just the same old formula again and again, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing for this series. If it was suddenly written without the extra bits of what they call the “AI” notes, then it wouldn’t be a Dungeon Crawler Carl book. I know this series is getting a lot of hype right now and I genuinely feel like it’s well deserved.
I’ve also been told the audiobook is amazing so I’m going to have to listen to that sometime.
I still love this series and wholeheartedly want to continue. I don’t know that this book was necessarily as good as the first one but it’s still a great read. It’s also harder with sequels sometimes because the nuances from the first book are standard in the second. That’s just the nature of the sequel, especially in books like these. In the end though, based on my rating system of “would I read it again” the answer is 100% a yes. That means this bad boy gets a good old 5 star rating. Congratulations book 2! You did it!
So that’s it for this one friends. Another 5 star book on the shelf. Isn’t it great?!
I am currently reading The Devils by Joe Abercrombie so look forward to that review here in the coming weeks. If you haven’t yet, I do also have an instagram account where I post small updates here and there if you are interested in that. I’ve been trying to be more consistent with it and I hope to watch it continue to grow.
Until next time!
Bye friends!!!!
Reading with teafortiffany 
Leave a comment