As a long-time fantasy and science fiction reader, I try to read everything good. Most good series have a good core but various poor parts that get glossed over. For example, LotR — great movie trilogy. The stuff not in the movie, not quite as good.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is the highest quality SF&F series I’ve read. Other genres have better books, such as North by Shackleton or Memoirs by Grant, these have real life insanity that’s hard to compete with. Even Carl hasn’t matched Shackleton’s level of insane plans yet. But the series isn’t done yet. Every chapter, every arc, often every sentence has a later payoff. I’ve gone back and forth through the series five times now, picking up on more and more throwaway moments that ended up being important later. I listened to all of Jeff Hays’ cold reads for this book. Matt Dinniman is a master of set-up and payoff. I was there as Matt book five sent Jeff into two minute laugh breakdown.
Meanwhile, great characters, constant menace, fun dialog, great combat, crunchy leveling details, absolutely everything good in a litRPG series.
Jeff Hays is at his best here. As mentioned, I followed the cold read for this, but he’s upped the quality even more in the post.
But if you’ve gotten this far, you already know all this. This is a good series. But it’s not a stand-alone. Start with Book 1. Each book is getting better and better, but there is considerable world building (and destruction).
Highly recommended. You’d need to dig into the most bizarre and well-written History tomes to find anything better.