I have read a total of one book from all the nominated series, which would be John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. Which is about senior citizens agreeing to go fight a war in exchange for spiffy new bodies. I read one, went “meh, I dislike body swap stories because they reinforce the cultural lie that mind exists separate and apart from the flesh when in fact they are inextricably interwined. Although I understand actors love them because then they get to do scenes like Gabrielle-in-Xena’s-body.“
Bodyswapping is right up there with psionics on my personal list of “science fiction tropes that convince me to close the book unless it’s done in the name of humor.” I got exposed to too much Jack L. Chalker during my formative phase of science fiction. Not interested.
And the Dungeon Crawler Carl series is full of horrible things being done in the name of humor, with body swapping one of the least unpleasant options. I’ve been in love with this series after picking it up for an airplane flight. It swiftly made the extremely short list of books that have gotten me to laugh out loud on a plane so the other travelers think I’m a lunatic. Right up there with Robert Sheckley. Thanks a lot, Matt Dinniman.
I had no clue previously that LitRPG was even a thing, but now I’m seriously thinking about trying to write it, after I get done with my trial novel, unless I just decide to write trial novels forever, since that’s a smaller field where it’s much easier to monopolize all the awards, especially if my trial novels are also funny.
The Carl series takes place inside a game. Evil aliens come to Earth, kill most of us, and put the rest in a Live Action Roleplaying Game which is disgustingly bloody, as well as a very profitable stream. Our hero, Carl, makes it past the initial extinction event with his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut. Who soon becomes sentient, and reveals herself to be a formidable player character, with magic missiles and a high charisma score.
There are seven books so far, with eight coming out in a couple weeks, documenting Carl’s progression to deeper levels of the dungeon, and the dangers found therein, and the amazing loot one can win for persevering. Carl is a steadfast bloke whose motto is “You Will Not Break Me” and in my mind, he looks kind of like young Bruce Campbell in the Evil Dead series, which is a good approximation of the humor/violence threshhold setting in the Carl books. And since Carl is a blue-collar guy with a knack for explosives, his point of view has lots of info dumps about how the trains work, contrasted with fleeting flashes of character development that fester into emotional gut punches later on in the journey.
There’s currently a Kickstarter happening for a RPG (and also a Card G) based on the Carl-verse, and I’m awfully close to investing in that, and even finding myself a group of deviant humans to game with once it’s launched, even though I haven’t done a childish silly thing like join a RPG campaign in ages. In the meantime, these guys have more fan art available than BTS and Phish combined, with an extraordinary creative out put that includes sculpture, all kinds of visual art, fanfic, posters, t-shirts, and something very near and dear to my heart: jacket patches.
Which feature heavily as a plot point in DC Carl, since Dinniman is a metal guy (and a fellow bass player), so at a certain point Carl gets equipped with a literal battle jacket.
(I’m an old lady so I have a @ConcertCommandoCoat instead that includes multigenres in addition to punk metal, such as K-Pop and Hawaiian, but once I went over 100 patches I gave it an Instagram of its own.)
Carl’s saga, which follows the Campbell scheme nicely and will remind some readers of the Odyssey and similar, is told in an inelegant everybro style that will probably make many Hugo voters grind their teeth. Packed full of gamer jargon to reflect its original genre. Not afraid to go for the gross jokes. The style is a mixed bag, written at a furious pace, with cringey cliches rubbing elbows with quotes that take up residence in your daily vocabulary. Multiple emotions are evoked. Plus there’s a convoluted-ass plot like no other, with multiple factions and interests, and story arcs that take hundreds of pages to resolve.
I am in awe, plus I am envious, and even more, I am amazed at how this dude managed to write so good that he parlayed a fanfic from a genre nobody’s ever heard of into a TV deal, vast amounts of merch, a fanfollowing that has thrown over $6m (at this point) at his $250k Kickstarter which has multiple VIP tiers, anyway. It’s all deserved. This is some good shit, fellow word addicts.
I’m not sure the Hugo base is ready for it though. While Carl does not violate a single one of our hallowed precepts of wokeness, with abundant representation for all, including Mongolians, Icelandics (is that the right word?) and sentient fish, and a political plot that actually succeeds in uniting maga and liberal fans against the evil corporate scumbags controlling this dystopia and their bootlicking AI, there’s some gross childish humor. Dick jokes. Poop jokes. Gory viscera jokes. Hell, the jokes never stop coming, and some of them probably shouldn’t be read while you are taking a sip of your beverage.
So yeah, Best Series is yet one of the categories I’m avoiding. Along with the editor/artist/podcast type stuff. Maybe I’ll check out the fan things, and I also note with dismay that I own one of the YA nominees (the latest Hunger Games) so I guess I might as well read them all.
But not after Carl. Immediately after my first reading of the Carl series I turned right around to read it AGAIN, because I love it that much. I haven’t done that with a book since probably Watership Down or something ancient like that, where you go “whoa, what did I just read???” And dive right back in because you’re not ready for the mundane world yet.
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