Welcome to Thunderdome

Book series in the LitRPG genre. Aliens come and destroy Earth as we know it, building a massive video game dungeon below the Earth's crust, allowing survivors to compete on a galaxy-wide broadcast videogame.

Carl and his girlfriend's cat are two of the survivors, and the first book covers their journey through the first 2 levels of the alien dungeon. Loot! Achievements! Stats! All the RPG stuff is here.

It's good and entertaining. But I didn't realize when I got the first book that it was a 8-book (unfinished) series. Started the second book yesterday.

Sounds interesting, but like TV shows. I hesitate to start something that isn't finished.

Leisher wrote: Sun Feb 01, 2026 3:44 pm Sounds interesting, but like TV shows. I hesitate to start something that isn't finished.

You can just read the first book. It stands on its own decently well. A couple of things don't get resolved (duh, since it's just the first 2 levels of the dungeon), but will give you a sense of the book's humor, style, etc. Then decide if it's worth coming back to, if it ever resolves.

Reading too! Like it so far.

Nearly done - I thought that the first book is too short for the story that they are setting up, so good to hear there are more to come.

Guess i'll order #2.


*unfinished scared me, but it's just book 8 of the series to come this year, and it already has a cover made, so it's probably mostly done.

** The other one I'm excited about this year is the next book in the Tyrant Philosophers series by Adrian Tchaikovsky, book 1 is City of Last Chances. Really good.

Book 8, but not final. Will be 2 to 4 more some guess

Turns out I accidentally read the version of book 2 that he originally put out before Amazon, and before his publishing deal. It had notes in it from the author as he published each chapter. Kind interesting, but turns out it was actually books 2 and 3 combined. So now I'm on book 4

Midway through book 5. Still entertaining.

A live-action 'Dungeon Crawler Carl' series is in development at Peacock
Seth MacFarlane will executive produce the series

Interesting

On the final current book (next book out in 1 month). It's a pretty good series. I feel like the humour has tamped down a bit, replaced with some seriousness. But the 5th book, I think, was my favorite outside of the original 1 or 2.

I'm thinking of starting this over the summer.

Leisher wrote: Fri Apr 10, 2026 10:06 am I'm thinking of starting this over the summer.

There will be 1 or 2 more books, is the only downside. But it's entertaining, and I think video gamers would like it more than general populace

TheCatt wrote: Sat Apr 11, 2026 8:33 am I think video gamers would like it more

Hey, that's me!