Back in May, I wrote about Dungeon Crawler Carl on my blog. At that point, I had just started the third book. In that post, I discussed a lot of the “issues” I had with the series up to that point, and I expressed doubt whether or not I would continue the series.

Well, I did continue.

I’m now working my way through book 6, and I still have so, so, so many issues with this series. And yet. I’m still reading. Let’s talk about a few of my issues.

!(WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD!)!⌗

One of my complaints back in May was that there were just no good characters in the book outside of Donut and Carl. I had hopes that Katia would be a good member of the party, but I didn’t know. Well. She was a good addition to the party. Notice the word “was” there? Yeah, she left. It was actually a pretty good six seconds of emotion on Dinniman’s part when she announced her intent to leave the party.

So, my issue is still there. There are characters on the periphery that we get to see sporadically, but there is no real emotional connection to any of them. Several of them, in fact, died at the end of Book 5, and I don’t care. I really don’t. A lot of them were seriously injured. Again, I’m just not caring. Because the author didn’t give any of them enough screen time and interaction with Donut or Carl to make them something to care about.

I’m not asking for all the Crawlers that Carl knows to be a big part of the book; the books are already too long. But one or two? Someone for Carl or Donut to be close with? Yeah, that’d make this series so much better.

Instead, even six books in, it still feels like they’re just moving from one battle to another. I will say the mechanics for book 6 are interesting. Dinniman has set up a dungeon level where they’re basically in a trading card game like Hearthstone. It is, however, absurdly complex, and the first 10% of the book is dedicated to explaining the rules. This is a failure on Dinniman’s part to actually make the game itself interesting. It could be interesting, but nobody wants to read the manual.

I do find myself intrigued by the outside politics that Carl seems to get himself involved in, but the occurrence of these forays outside the dungeon are so rare; they seem not to matter, even if it’s implied that they matter a great deal. By the time another field trip outside the dungeon happens, I’ve mostly forgotten what happened last time.

There appears to be a buildup for the 9th floor, which is where aliens from outside come into the dungeon to fight each other. That seems to be where this series is leading to. Supposedly there are only nine books total in the series, so we’re getting close to where stuff is going to have to happen.

I also still have so many problems with Carl and Donut. Oftentimes there is just no emotion there. That has improved since book 3, but many times Donut will say something horrible, and Carl will just have no reaction whatsoever. I know Donut is a cat, and Dinniman is trying to portray her as cats are: a##holes. But Carl often comes across as just having no feelings whatsoever. It has gotten better, as I said. When Katia left the group, Carl felt something. For a few paragraphs. Then we moved on, and we never got the sense that it affected him again.

Donut has actually seen a lot more character growth. Her feelings are on display a lot more, and she has a lot more connection and feelings for other characters. The issue? Most of this happens off camera, so to speak. The reader doesn’t get to see it at all. We hear about it sometimes, but not often. It happens in personal chats between Donut and other characters, and we only get to know it when Donut says something about it to Carl.

It’s a very odd way to write a book series. The author is supposed to make me care about what happens to the characters. I do not. I mean, yes, I’m going to be pissed if at the end either Donut or Carl dies. But only because if they do die, it will be a huge waste of my time. I’m not in this 9 or 10 book series just to have it not end with some kind of happy ending.

So the question is, why am I still reading? The previous 800 words were all negative, or mostly negative. Why keep going back?

I don’t know. I want to say because it’s good enough. I want to say that the endings always draw me in (which they do). I want to say that there is just enough interest on my part on how this ends to keep me going.

In reality, I think it’s simply momentum. I’m in the universe now, and it’s easy to just hit “read next” when I get to the end of one of the books.

Also, potential. This series had so much potential, and I guess I’m still trying to have hope that the later books in the series live up to it. We’ll find out if I’m disappointed.