Dungeon Crawler Carl is on the Clarke shortlist. I managed to find a (very) cheap copy.
I feel like any way I approach this it's going to appear as a pose, as though I'm putting on a rhetorical costume - or a more obvious one than usual!
Is there any point producing an outraged or even a serious book review? It would be like criticising Coronation Street for being formulaic and melodramatic. Dinneman's novel is already incredibly popular, with seven sequels, a possible TV adaptation, a tabletop RPG in the works and more. It's a phenomenon. So, what to do?
I didn't get a computer until I was 29 though I had used university PCs for research and writing some of my essays before, in the mid 90s: I've been trying to remember the mid 90s and I think I WROTE most of my essays!? But yes, in the early months of 2001 I moved to London to be with my partner and begin my nursing degree. Somehow, I really don't remember how, or even quite why, I started playing games, RPGs to be exact. The answer is probably in my childhood. At 12 or 13 I got my hands on some of the Fighting Fantasy books. I was probably slightly too old for them but for a boy who loved all things SF and fantasy on TV and film, they fulfilled a need similar to the one the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon (1983-85) satisfied. I was mainly reading Agatha Christie and Stephen King at this point and dealing with all kinds of nonsense that a child shouldn't have to.
A bit later, maybe I was 15 or even 16, I discovered the Dragonlance Chronicles, David Eddings and others. If someone had asked me, I'm not sure I could have told them who Tolkien was, though I wasn't totally clueless because I had read A Wizard of Earthsea (I was).
I think I can describe all of that as a kind of yearning - for monsters, old fashioned adventure, for simple childhood pleasures, a nerdiness that couldn't find expression elsewhere. As you can see I find it, still, mildly embarrassing. I shouldn't, my fifteen years as a school librarian showed me how even the most advanced readers - 14 year olds I was feeding Middlemarch and Bruno Schultz - still chersished YA books and childhood favourites.
But yes, over a decade later I would discover the similar pleasures of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale on our PC. The pleasure of levelling up and finding magical gear and weapons has NEVER left me. I've played many more RPGs and action RPGs since - especially the FromSoftware games and the Nioh games - but when Baldur's Gate 3 came out in 2023 I thought Christmas had finally arrived AND it was finally worth celebrating.
I tell you all this because I didn't hate Dungeon Crawler Carl at all. There are things to dislike about it certainly but before I got bored (it IS repetitive) - maybe two thirds in - I was mildly entertained. I had smirked a few times. Most of all I enjoyed finding out the creative details of Carl and Donut's new magical items. Feel free to judge me. If you don't know the plot... aliens level Earth leaving about 14 million people left alive. Those remaining humans then have to fight it out, for the viewing pleasure of (mainly evil) aliens across the galaxy in a kind of Deathtrap Dungeon. Their advanced technology is such that their AI runs it like a game - an RPG where the survivors literally level up, getting stronger, gaining new abilities and equipment. The novel follows Carl and his partner's cat Donut as they try to survive.
Apparently the book is an example of LitRPG, a new(ish) sub-genre of speculative fiction. It's not hard to understand the appeal or the popularity - games, (quickly fact-checking a handful of articles) generate double the revenue of movies and music combined. Go on YouTube and you'll find that millions of people watch walkthrough videos for entertainment, not just to help them through a game. Think of cosplay and fan-fiction too. I could bemoan the omnipresence of formulaic, derivative products throughout the cultural landscape but at this stage what is the point? And honestly I doubt whether people wondering about its place on the Clarke are really wanting to spoil anybody's pleasure. It's inclusion raises (all the old, familiar) questions about what a book prize shortlist should be for: whether such a list, that purports to show off the best of something, has a responsibility(?), a burden of trust(?) to choose books that give readers the opportunity to experience wonder and ingenuity, to engage with wisdom and wit. But I've written about this before.
Dungeon Crawler Carl aims for a kind of laddish, boorish Hollywood charm. Carl is a tall, relatively well-built hero: you can imagine it as a mid career Bruce Willis vehicle (rather than one for Arnold). The novel wants to show off its progressive credentials by poking fun at Carl's masculinity: Donut lets it slip that Bea, Carl's partner, was sleeping around, there's a small dick joke too and the book often derives humour from Carl's lack of trousers. Low hanging fruit you might say. But these little ironic subversions just act to reinforce Carl's masculinity, especially when most of his power, enhanced through levels and equipment, are his fists. The other way the novel wants to remind you of its heart, and it's smarts, is by showing us that Carl despises the violence he is required to mete out. This is often delivered with a gamer's knowingness. Even in a game as celebrated for it's choices and characterisation as Baldur's Gate 3, it still has a community of goblins that many of us will slaughter for experience. Carl and Donut encounter and murder similar villains throughout with goblins the first, just so you can't miss the joke. Furthermore Carl is usually the smartest and the most moral in the room, forever muttering that he won't be broken whatever he is forced to do. It's incredibly simple stuff. You begin to wonder how a similar plot with different types of characters could turn out: how it might be possible to mess with stereotypes, to produce something more thought provoking, even in its own (gaming) terms, whilst retaining the humour and irony.
With that said the biggest villains, along with (alien) capitalist class, are two ICE agents, so fair play. And I appreciate that lots of readers will love Donut.
The worst of the novel reminds me of playing a police side at five-a-side football (MANY years ago). You kind of knew what was coming - either someone would take a mardy swipe at you or they'd try to wind you up by intimating that they'd slept with your sister the previous night. As someone who thinks Frankenhooker is a work of sleazy genius, I have a high threshold for distasteful jokes but here you keep finding an obnoxious level of frat boy sexist nastiness:
"Goblin Shamans are the leader class of all goblin clans, second only to the War Chieftain or, more rarely, the Goblin Warlord. They are without humor and are said, as part of their training, to have to pick two of the following three actions in order to graduate Shamanka University: they have to fuck, cook, and/or eat their own parents. Most don’t pick cook." (126)
Or:
"If you hear banjo music, run. Clurichauns are distant, hillbilly relatives of the Leprechauns. And while the Leprechauns are said to guard vast piles of gold, the only thing Clurichauns might hoard are Polaroids of their own sisters sitting on the can and questionable business schemes. This particular sect is of the unvaccinated variety. Don’t let them sneeze on you." (260)
Or:
The stubborn and hot-headed Mongoliensis is not the type of pet to ever be “tamed.” The best one can hope for is mutual respect. And even then they still might try to eat you if the fancy strikes them. While especially powerful, fast, and vicious when they are fully grown at level 15, getting them to level 15 is about as likely as a cheerleader from West Virginia reaching her 18th birthday as a virgin." (412)
And on the final page:
"New Achievement! You read a book! You managed to make it all the way through the first Dungeon Crawler Carl book without throwing it against the wall! Reward: You get to read the next book! And great news, folks. The next book has clowns and dead hookers in it!" (436)
These are examples of the smart-arsed AI descriptions designed to provoke and prod Carl before every encounter, so maybe there is a world where you can explain them away. I don't think so.
As is often the case - daily, on most aspects of human endeavour - I find myself wondering what Douglas and Terry would have thought. A Hitchhiker's Guide particularly flashed into my brain at various points, especially with the whole aliens destroying Earth thing - what would Arthur, Ford and Zaphod have made of their (limited) choices - but Dinneman's novel is not blessed with great sophistication and certainly not understatement. At this point I was hoping for a bit of inspiration myself, another way in, but honestly I think I'd need a Cultural Studies lecturer to set me an essay title if I hope to get more out of this.
Do I want to write obvious things? Should Dungeon Crawler Carl be on a Clarke shortlist? All that malarkey.
As usual I feel it sharply, as an injustice. I am a ridiculous human.
Dinneman doesn't need the cachet of a Clarke nomination: I can only think the Clarke desires some of Carl's popularity. Cynical, I know. #howtowinfriendsandinfluencepeople
So, unless you're a gamer, or a Cultural Studies student, or an anthropologist, please treat yourself to Slow Gods instead. Or Metal from Heaven. Relish what genre can do in all its exhilarating, mind-blowing glory.
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