Dungeon Crawler Carl

It really could be the next big thing.

LitRPG is a fairly weird genre of literature, and there are a lot of really low efforts out there. It's evolved from authors who generated their stories via roleplay sessions (probably the most famous one being The Expanse, and Ty Franck writing it as back-story for his TTRPG). In summary, the story takes place in a reality where physical and mental ability is literally gamified, enumerated, and game-like physics and rules exist. It has attracted some shockingly low effort writing. I stumbled on some of this low-effort slop a couple of years ago, and then hard-avoided the genre.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is not low effort. It would be very easy to think it is when you start it. It's crass. It's knee-deep in pop culture, violence and computer and roleplay OTT violence. It's immediately bat-shit insane. It drop-kicks all sense of reality out of the window, and then just keeps going. It's self-aware of its own absurdity, doesn't get bogged down in the mechanics of the universe it's created, and very rarely stops too long. It gets exceptionally dark. It takes regular potshots at it's own core demographic fanbase, comfortable that they too are self-aware.

I'd strongly recommend listening to the audiobooks on normal-speed, which is apparently the most common way it's "read". That narrator (Jeff Hays) has an astounding vocal range. I genuinely didn't believe he was all of the voices until I came across a video of him doing them all. It's a series of books (I really don't want to call them books) that were authored for the audiobook format...Matt Dinniman and Jeff Hays have worked very closely on creating the characters together as the series moves on. It has themes that can resonate hard with the current world, with AI taking over, money and power corrupting all, and a general feel of universal imbalance. This is not going to win any chin-stroking literary awards, but it will absolutely resonate with a modern audience.

I'm just about to move into book 8 (or Level 10...after all, it is set in a virtual game world), and it's very much kept itself fresh, which is rare for a book series that long. Matt has said there will be one more book, though it might be split into two to keep the length vaguely sensible. It's all building up towards a suitably universe-ending peril, and (so far) he's been pretty good at tying the various threads together.

It's been optioned for a live-action TV show, with filming starting early next year. It's got the potential to be really very, very good. It's eminently quotable, plenty of strong characters, and Matt and Jeff will be directly involved (they have said that it can't be a direct replay of the books, there is just too much in there, but he's promising to try and stay true to the story). The biggest challenge I can see will be the portrayal of the characters that already exists via the audiobooks. Without adding in spoilers, if Donut the Cat or Samantha the Sex-Doll head don't sound like Jeff Hays portrayal, it would alienate the already quite large fan-base.