If You Like Dungeon Crawler Carl…

If you haven’t read Dungeon Crawler Carl, the hit LitRPG series, by Matt Dinniman (2020) yet, I’d bet you’ve heard about it or seen it or have a friend who is raving about it. I’ve read and loved the first book, and my teen is currently on book six of the series (and impatient with me for not keeping up). This is my first foray into the genre, so I will not attempt to recommend other LitRPG books below. If that’s what you are looking for, check out this post on Books of Brilliance.

Instead I’m going to focus on some aspects of Carl and direct you to books I like that share them. These aren’t readalikes necessarily, but something a little more specific.

If you’re interested in alien invasions, try this series:

Remembrance of Earth’s Past series by Cixin Liu (started 2008; translated to English in 2014)

This sweeping series will test your mind and bend your perceptions. Ye Wenjie is a political prisoner who works at a secret military initiative. She finds a way to send a message out into the universe and later receives a response from the planet Trisolaris. Trisolaris’s three suns make the planet’s environment unpredictable and unstable, and the inhabits desperately search for a solution or a new home. Nanotechnologist Wang Miao plays a virtual reality game that simulates Trisolaris’s environment and is recruited by an agency to help prevent a Trisolarin invasion.

If you loved the competition aspect of Carl, I recommend these two fantasy books (both happen to be YA):

All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody and C.L. Herman (2021)

This intense novel features a battle to the death, and all the contestants have grown up together in the same small town. The teens fight to win a cache of ancient magic, until one contestant decides that it would be better to investigate the mystery behind the tournament. Although darker than Carl, this books shares the appealing aspect of both playing along with and against the game.

The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas (2022)

I would pitch this fantastic YA fantasy as Hunger Games x Percy Jackson but with Mexican mythology and a trans main character. Teo is the trans son of the goddess of birds and is selected as one of 10 semidioses (demigods) to compete in the titular trials. The winner carries light to the temples of the sun, keeping life going strong in the world, while the loser will be a sacrifice to Sol.

If you love videogames and wish that Carl focused less on attacking animal hybrids, this literary novel is for you:

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022)

Sam and Sadie meet as teens in a pediatric hospital, where Sadie helps Sam recover from the trauma of a car accident that killed his mother through a shared love of video games. They reunite as college students in Massachusetts. Sadie is studying video game development. Sam and his roommate Marx, impressed by a game they test for her, decide to launch a game company with her. The endeavor is successful and is bought out by a company that pressures the team to pursue directions that Sadie feels are selling out. The friends come together and drift apart throughout the book, and large sections of the text are spent inside the world of the games, to great effect.

If you need more silliness and talking cats in your reading life, try this one:

Starter Villain by John Scalzi (2023)

Charlie is barely scraping by as a substitute teacher who lives with two cats. When his uncle Jake dies, he attends the funeral and is shocked when another guest stabs the corpse to confirm Jake isn’t faking his death. Turns out Jake was a supervillain, and Charlie has inherited his empire. And those two cats? Genetically modified super-intelligent spy cats who can talk and have been keeping tabs on Charlie. Uncle Jake’s villainous enemies are now after Charlie, so he seeks refuge on an island hideout with Jake’s assistant. Lots of plots, double crosses, and hijinks make this a fun read that Carl fans will love.