What the Margins Carried: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Matt Dinniman

I went into this one completely blind! Per usual, spoiler warning!

I knew it was about gaming, and nerd shizah. So of course I was like, “SOLD”. I knew it’d be quirky, according to the couple of recommendations I heard.
Additional relevant context: I grew up in a gamer family. My dad built computers and helped me play Tomb Raider before I could nail the controls. I feel if you’re not a gamer, some of this may be more zany or whimsical for ya.

That said, I want to keep it real about my experience reading it.

This wasn’t a book that pulled me forward. I never felt that page-gripping urgency, the “one more chapter” itch. Despite the manufactured tension and constant stakes, I felt oddly untouched by them. I chuckled a handful of times, but the humor often felt like it was trying very hard to be funny in a way that left me watching it work rather than laughing along with it.

I think that’s the thing: Dungeon Crawler Carl is deeply committed to its bit!

Dinniman doesn’t hedge. He doesn’t soften the gamified absurdity or apologize for it, and I genuinely respect that. The systems are clear, the rules are consistent, and the world knows exactly what it is. In that sense, the book feels less like a narrative trying to transform you and more like a proof of concept executed with confidence.
For me, that confidence didn’t translate into emotional investment, per se, but it did translate into inspiration.

This is the kind of book that makes you think, “Yeah. You can just do that.” You can commit fully to a strange idea, build it out, and let it exist without trying to justify itself as something bigger or deeper than it is. That, to me, is still art! Even when it doesn’t hit every reader the same way. (Maybe especially when it doesn’t hit everyone the same!)

Ironically, my favorite section came from the margins themselves: the goblin perspective tucked into the back of the book. That reframing, that sideways glance at the world, was where I felt most engaged. (I’ve always had a soft spot for those voices; Grendel still sits high on my personal list.) It made me wish the book lingered more often in those unexpected angles.

By the end, I realized part of why this book never pulled me under: as a gamer, I could see the safety net too clearly. The mechanics (the heals, the glitches, the perfectly timed exploits) felt less like earned survival and more like a built-in guarantee. I was being directed to care, but I never truly trusted the story to let anything irreversibly matter. It reads less like a descent into danger and more like a novelized Let’s Play; clever, competent, occasionally witty, but emotionally insulated, nothing hits too deep.

Which is why the goblins caught me off guard, methinks!

In those final pages, when a nameless group suddenly becomes something warmer simply because Donut casually gives one of them a name— and they begin naming each other in return— the story finally breathed, to me. That small act disrupts the system. It introduces meaning where there was only function. And for the first time, I felt something real, in these pages.
Unexpectedly, the most emotional moment in the book arrives not through escalating stakes, but through recognition. Being seen as a being.

So while this wasn’t a story that consumed me, it did leave me with a few glimmers, not of plot, but of possibility. Sometimes that’s enough to carry forward, even if I’m not racing to pick up the next installment.
If you need a palate cleanser from more intense fictions or a string of nonfictions, this is truly a nice evening’s walk through a park for your brain wrinkles. Fun, something different without having any sort of learning curve to ground yourself in that world!

Sometimes a book teaches you not what you want more of, but exactly where your heart actually enters a story. For me, it wasn’t the boss fights or the glitches, but in a handful of nameless goblins who, once named, finally felt alive.~