The story started out fairly well. There’s a world-sized dungeon and this guy named Carl is a dungeon crawler in it. After the first couple chapters I was already hoping there were follow-up novels I could get. Yes, the entire premise is utterly corny but that’s par for the course with novels like these. It’s part of their charm, actually.
Sadly, it starts going downhill several chapters in when a side character joins up–a side character that has stats that dwarf Carl’s. A side character that takes the lead in most interactions. A side character that gets to loot the corpses first and also gets MORE loot than Carl. A side character with abilities that are way cooler and more powerful than Carl’s. A side character who frequently berates Carl, is smarter than Carl, and who tells Carl what to do. Are you seeing a trend here? Yeah, the side character effectively becomes the main character while Carl is relegated to sidekick status.
This wouldn’t be so bad if the side character wasn’t the stereotypical arrogant, super smart, bossy female who’s actually secretly sensitive that appears in the majority of media (seriously, when was the last time you saw a female in fiction who was stupid and bumbling? come on authors. make original personalities please. i’m getting a little tired of these cookie cutter characters). Also, it wouldn’t be so bad if the author didn’t try to keep Carl as the main character. When you have a “main character” overshadowed by a side character like this, it makes for a very unsatisfying tale because the side character is now the one driving the story.
I docked the narrator–who I normally love to listen to–a couple stars because he used a voice for Carl that was warbling and shaky most of the time instead of a normal voice. It’s hard to explain but after 7 or 8 chapters, it got really grating. Carl is a big dude and a military veteran. Why is he still acting scared and mind-blown by events? I could understand it at first, but not after many chapters.
Anyways, big disappointment, but then I’m probably a more mature reader than most of those who’d be interested in this novel and I have a feeling that being a bit more well-read, I probably have much higher standards. If you haven’t read as many stories as I have, then you might not even know the characters are cookie cutter so it’s not something you’d even think to gripe about. Ergo, younger audiences would probably find this more entertaining than I.