Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Dungeon Crawler Carl)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Join Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they fight fantastical creatures and deadly mobs to make it to the next level and build the kind of fan following the dungeon masters can’t ignore in the second book in the smash-hit Dungeon Crawler Carl series—now with bonus material exclusive to this print edition.

“Greetings, Crawlers! The training levels have concluded. Now the games may truly begin.”

The aliens have come, and they’ve transformed Earth into a multilevel, video game–like dungeon. It’s the newest season of the galaxy’s most watched game show, Dungeon Crawler World. Now on the third floor, Carl and Donut have to fight harder than ever. They’ve already proven that a Coast Guard vet and once-and-forever feline royalty are an almost unstoppable team. Their ratings are off the charts. Viewers can’t get enough. But the dungeon gets more dangerous each day, and now there’s a whole new problem to deal with: Quests.

They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered women rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose. Can Carl and Donut solve the mystery in time?

And can Carl finally find some pants?

Matt Dinniman is a writer and artist from Gig Harbor, Washington. He is the author of the NYTs best-selling Dungeon Crawler Carl series along with several other books about the end of the world. He doesn't really hate Cocker Spaniels, and he plays bass in a metal band.

Praise for Dungeon Crawler Carl

“Fresh. Creative. Hilarious. I'm obsessed…Princess Donut is my queen.” – Actor, producer and New York Times bestselling author Felicia Day

"Dungeon Crawler Carl is legit awesome."– #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson

"A dangerously addicting tale of chaos and mayhem. I’m thoroughly hooked!”– #1 New York Times bestselling author Callie Hart

“Welcome to your newest obsession…the highly addictive, hilarious series continues to draw in new fans.” – USA Today

"This series has no goddamn business burying so much depth and emotion and complexity under its bawdy, gory surface, but it does so anyway. What a wild-ass and unexpected delight." – New York Times bestselling author Scott Lynch

“[A] comically cosmic adventure series…often laugh-out-loud funny…Grind your way to dungeon mastery alongside Carl and Princess Donut.” – The Wall Street Journal

"This is the book for anyone who ever wondered what it would be like to be a role player in a game with the best game master ever...Once you start, you won't put it down." - Patricia Briggs, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson series

“Dungeon Crawler Carl is the best start to a series I’ve read this year. I wish I’d tried it sooner.” – Will Wight, author of the Cradle series

"When it came time to pick a race, Dinniman and Dungeon Crawler Carl decided he would continue to appear as a human, and that’s what this series has blossomed into, something profoundly and endearingly human.” – Slate

"If there's a better LitRPG than Dungeon Crawler Carl, I haven't read it." - Shirtaloon, author of He Who Fights Monsters

“Dungeon Crawler Carl is just one big smile all the way through. Put on your best pair of boxer shorts and sit back for a truly fun and enjoyable read.”—New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson

“To describe the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and the first book in particular, one must blend the darkest, grittiest science fiction with the humour of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It mixes fun, whimsical absurdity, and serious, dark themes with dire consequences…it is so spectacularly good that I cannot recommend it highly enough.” - Grimdark Magazine

“Dinniman’s Douglas-Adams-but-playing-D&D romp was so much fun that I immediately went out and got the next two books…genuinely joyful.” – LitHub.com

Carl's Doomsday Scenario is the second novel in Matt Dinniman's wildly imaginative Dungeon Crawler Carl series. It continues the story of Carl, a former Coast Guard serviceman, and Princess Donut, his intelligent and extremely opinionated talking cat, after aliens have transformed Earth into a gigantic, deadly dungeon. The planet has become the setting for Dungeon Crawler World, an intergalactic reality show in which surviving humans are forced to fight monsters for the entertainment of alien viewers. By the beginning of this novel, Carl and Donut have already survived the training floors. Now the real game begins, and the dangers become considerably more complicated.

The novel opens as Carl and Donut enter the dungeon's third floor, known as the Over City. Unlike the more confined environments of the earlier levels, this floor feels like an enormous ruined metropolis. The apparent night sky above them is actually an illusion, immediately reminding Carl that nothing in this world is quite what it seems. They are reunited with Mordecai, their experienced and sarcastic guildmaster, who helps them understand the new rules of the level.

One of the biggest changes is the introduction of races and classes. Carl chooses the Primal race and becomes a Compensated Anarchist, a class that suits his increasingly rebellious attitude toward the dungeon's controlling system. Donut, meanwhile, remains a cat but chooses the wonderfully absurd Former Child Actor class. The choice is more important than it first appears because it gives Donut a special management benefit, bringing Mordecai into a more formal role as her manager. Donut's decision also reinforces one of the novel's recurring pleasures: even in a terrifying apocalypse, she remains completely herself—vain, demanding, dramatic, intelligent, and unexpectedly brave.

The Over City is not simply a collection of monsters waiting to be defeated. It is a complex environment filled with quests, non-player characters, settlements, strange magical systems, and competing stories. Carl and Donut quickly discover that surviving requires more than physical strength. They have to understand the rules, manage their resources, choose allies carefully, and figure out what the dungeon's designers expect them to do.

This becomes especially important when they receive a major quest called “The Show Must Go On.” Their adventures lead them into the bizarre remains of the city, where an undead circus becomes one of the central threats. The circus is controlled by dangerous clowns, and what initially appears to be another ridiculous dungeon challenge gradually develops into something much darker. The story repeatedly combines comedy with genuine horror, allowing Dinniman to make the reader laugh one moment and feel uneasy the next.

At the same time, Carl and Donut become increasingly aware that the dungeon is not merely designed to kill them. It is designed to entertain an audience. Their growing popularity means that alien viewers are watching their every move. Ratings, sponsors, quests, rewards, and dramatic events all influence their chances of survival. Carl understands that this creates a strange form of power. If he can become entertaining enough, the audience may help him. But being popular also means that the dungeon's authorities have a reason to keep him alive—and a reason to make his life as dramatic and painful as possible.

The novel therefore explores one of its most important ideas: the transformation of suffering into entertainment. Carl and the other crawlers are fighting for their lives, but millions of alien spectators treat their experiences as a television programme. Their deaths are content. Their relationships are content. Their victories are content. Even their emotional breakdowns can become part of the show. This makes the world funny on the surface but deeply disturbing underneath.

Carl's relationship with Donut becomes even more important as the story progresses. They began the series as an unlikely pair, but the dungeon has turned them into genuine partners. Donut is not simply a pet Carl protects; she is a capable crawler with her own skills, ambitions, and judgment. Carl frequently tries to keep her safe, while Donut often demonstrates that she is far more dangerous and resourceful than he expects. Their arguments and jokes provide much-needed humor, but their growing loyalty gives the story its emotional foundation.

The stakes rise dramatically when Signet, an important figure connected to the dungeon's quests, kidnaps Donut. Carl's response reveals how much their relationship has changed. He is willing to negotiate with powerful forces and put himself in extreme danger to get her back. Donut's survival is also aided by an unexpected ability from her class, which activates when her health reaches zero. Meanwhile, Carl must deal with dangerous creatures such as the Street Urchins, monsters that normally clean up the abandoned city but become deadly when their environment is disturbed.

The story then becomes increasingly tangled in a darker conspiracy involving a necromancer, city elves, and the exploitation and murder of women in the Over City. Carl and his companions begin to uncover evidence that the apparent chaos of the dungeon conceals deeper systems of manipulation. Madame Quill, who initially appears to be an ordinary secretary, is eventually revealed to be central to the conspiracy. Her actions set off consequences that threaten the stability of the city itself.

Another important development involves Katia, a new ally who becomes part of Carl and Donut's growing circle. Her presence helps broaden the story beyond the original pair and introduces another perspective on survival inside the dungeon. Alliances become increasingly important because the third floor is too complicated and dangerous for any individual crawler to understand completely.

The climax brings together the novel's humor, horror, and increasingly serious questions about power. Carl becomes involved with a highly unstable soul crystal, an object containing an enormous amount of destructive energy. Through a chain of events, he ends up possessing something capable of devastating an entire city. The absurdity of the situation is typical of Dinniman: Carl is already struggling to survive, and now he accidentally finds himself carrying what amounts to a doomsday weapon. The dangerous object gives the book its title and becomes a major problem for the future.

By the end of the novel, Carl and Donut have survived another level, but they are nowhere close to safety. They have become stronger, more experienced, and more famous, yet their situation has also become more dangerous. They now understand that the dungeon is part of a much larger system controlled by powerful beings who view their suffering as entertainment.

Ultimately, Carl's Doomsday Scenario works because it balances fast-paced adventure, absurd comedy, genuine emotional stakes, and social criticism. Beneath the monsters, weapons, statistics, and game mechanics is a story about people forced into an impossible situation and trying to remain human. Carl's growing resistance to the dungeon reflects a refusal to accept a system simply because it calls itself a game.

The novel's deepest strength is its treatment of survival. Carl does not become heroic because he is fearless; he becomes heroic because he keeps caring about people despite having every reason to stop caring. Donut's loyalty, humor, and fierce personality make her an equal partner rather than a sidekick. Together, they represent something the dungeon cannot easily control: genuine friendship and loyalty in a world designed to turn every relationship into entertainment.

In the end, Carl's Doomsday Scenario expands the series from a simple monster-survival adventure into a much larger story about freedom, exploitation, morality, friendship, and resistance. The jokes remain outrageous, the monsters become stranger, and the action becomes more spectacular, but the emotional core becomes clearer. Carl and Donut are no longer simply trying to reach the next floor. They are beginning to understand the system they are trapped inside—and, perhaps more importantly, beginning to consider what it might take to fight back.