I loved “watching” the Dungeon Crawl game show with Carl and Princess Donut as they try to survive and get to the next level. The story had the perfect balance of humor, love, real life issues, cuteness, danger, machinations, supernatural elements, and morality. The earth was a planet seeded with humans thousands of years ago and now the conglomerate is back to collect the earth since we failed to object. As a result, all the human made items are immediately collapsed into the ground instantly killing billions. Any human/animal not in a structure is encouraged to go into the stairwells to underground and participate in the Dungeon Crawl to battle for their lives. At the time of the collapse, Carl happens to be outside in the dead of winter collecting his girlfriend’s escaped cat. He is not wearing pants and quickly loses the too small crocs he did have on. So he enters the Dungeon shoeless and without pants while carrying a show cat. Soon enough Princess Donut is elevated to a Crawler instead of just a pet. She can talk and she and Carl are a team. I loved the interplay between Carl and Princess Donut and that Carl’s character is a sweet, snarky, messy, lucky, sarcastic, kind of dumb, and awkward man who regularly screws up which makes him a very likeable and relatable hero. The story includes what you’d expect from this genre – fighting, dangerous situations, supernatural creatures, evil entities, henchmen, loyal friends, tragic back stories, mystical coincidences, snark, and laughs. I will definitely keep reading the series to see what the next levels are like and what happens with Carl and Princess Donut.
Jeff Hays did a phenomenal job narrating the story and characters into life with enough change of inflection, tone and cadence to voice multiple characters quite convincingly. This was one of the best narrations I have ever heard. Reading the story was great but listening to it raised the enjoyment to a whole other level.