Columbus day

Ch 1

Our main character is army.  Off duty in his home town.  Our setting is northern Maine USA.  Aliens have attacked.  Why northern Maine? Best guess is their ship crashed and they're waiting for a tow truck to come get them.  Main character and some coconspirators kidnap an alien.  Its described as a hamster.  But like a human hamster.  Another alien ship shows up.  They blow up the crashed ship.  Our assumption is they're picking up their people and going somewhere more important. But they send out a search party presumably to get back the kidnapped alien.  So no such luck on the leaving.  Then there's an attack. Narrator explains that its other aliens and those aliens are the real bad guys.

Ch 2 pg 17

It's a year later and bishop, that's narrator's name, is going to war on behalf of the aliens that saved them from the hamster aliens 

Ch 3 pg 32

Big chapter.  Bishop goes to a planet they call camp a or something like that.   Bishop gets in fighting shape.  Everyone is underwhelmed by the weapons they're given.  He has relations with a lady named Shauna that's a fast runner.  He gets promoted to Sargent and is shipped off to a planet they are calling paradise to steal farm land from the hamsters.

Ch 4 pg 62

Bishop is sent to guard a small farming village.  Things go well, until one of the villagers finds out that bishop had captured a hamster on earth.  The governor is coming and wants to have tea with bishop.  He's all upset at how not war the war hes doing is.  I think I dislike bishop.  Like I think hes a good person,  but I wouldn't be upset if he died.

Ch 5 pg 75

The governor tells bishop that earth is being played by the lizards.  Some wormhole shift made earth more appealing and so the hamsters bombed earth to make it less appealing.  As a result the only value earth has is to have its military forces rented out.  They meet a lot more and talk about all sorts of stuff.  At one point bishop gets pulled out and put on another base so the lizards dont find out the full extent of what he's learned.

The weather is bad.  They have a word for it that translates to musty blanket.

Ch 6 pg 93

Bishop is doing his best to earn his keep at the base.  He's told there's a lizard ship.out in the jungle some folks are gonna go check out.  He's in.  Whilst checking out the ship, a bunch of hamster ships show up and bomb the base.  Bishop is gonna fight back.  The group of 17 people make it to an armory and then up a mountain via some tunnels amd succeed in blowing up a couple troop transport ships.  Pretty soon after, the lizards return and the hamsters surrender. 

Ch 7 pg 114

Bishop is promoted to colonel because the lizards are impressed by how many hamsters he killed.  They're a warrior race through and through. The lizards are horrible in every conceivable way.

Ch 8 pg 124

Bishop is charged with planting potatoes. He's on a convoy full of soil and seeds and all his trailers are blown up.  The lizards give him orders to retaliation by killing civilians and he refuses that order.  He gets arrested for refusing that order.  Lots of people are getting arrested for refusing orders today.

Ch 9 pg 149

The hamsters attack with full force and in doing so damage the prison so that bishop and other prisoners can escape. But then they are al captured by hamsters.  Remember the governor bishop was talking to?  Turns out she's vice president of the planet and she wants bishop to come work for her as her human liazon.

Ch 10

The book goes way off the rails here. 

Bishop is in a private prison.  A door unlocks.  He goes through that door.  What looks like a beer can starts talking to him.  Long story short, its a powerful ancient AI.  It helps him steal a ship and he and the other three people that escaped the lizard prison all escape together.  They fly to a human supply post and get 20 more volunteers to be part of the mission to save earth.  The gist is the AI, that bishop names skippy, can shut down wormholes. They get to earth, they shut down the wormhole, that gets the lizards off of our planet.

Ch 11 pg 176

second half Carl the dungeon crawler

Ch 28

Donut is a natural charmer so the interview is great despite Carl's complete incompetence. The only good thing related to Carl is that he has a catch phrase.  GOD DAMN IT DONUT.

Ch 29

Carl and donut talk to Odette in private abd she gives them sone tips.  The best one was stop complaining so much.  Complaining is funny. So if you complain about something theyre gonna keep giving you that thing so viewer's can laugh at you.

Ch 30

They go to the second level and fight some monsters and find a saferoom and open the rewards they got for the boss fight.

Ch 31

A lot of people didn't make it.  The lady with the shopping cart is assumed to be one of those.  All the old folks people are just gonna go straight to the stairs.  Carl says he'll clear the way. 

Ch 32

Theyre fighting diseased leprechauns. 

If they get their loot, they get moonshine jugs that they can turn explosive by attaching a torch.  Problem is if you touch them at all, you are infected and you cant heal.  Carl is infected and it lasts a while.

Ch 33

They find the headquarters of the diseased leprechauns. Turns out their while deal is they're an MLM (pyramid scheme for those not familiar with the modern vernacular for a very old scam) with the goal of selling moonshine. It has a 5 percent chance of killing you.

There are some fairies, actually flying little ladies that are in charge.  Donut charms them.  Through some shenhannegans they separate the fairies from the diseased leprechauns and Carl blows them up with a moonshine bomb.  Then they kill the fairies.  They find a recipe for an immunity smoothie, one part moonshine, one part fairy.  The boenders are in the next room. 

Ch 34

Problem is the next room is next to the boss fight and this particular boss is a krakenkaren and they're the real top of the pyramid and they have tentacles that can reach into the room with the blenders and are also diseased.  So Carl and donut fight diseased leprechauns and avoid the tentacles and blend the immunity smoothie and thank God they do because carl gets hit by a tentacle and is temporarily infected by vigorous measles before the immunity kicks in.  

Carl has donut turn one of the diseased leprechauns into a zombie and gives him a hug explosive and some dynamite and tells him to run into the room with the karenkracken.  

Ch 35

It works, the karenkracken is a dead.  Carl is not, just barely.  Why?  The powers that be are really dedicated to his barefootedness and gave him a pedicure kit that pretty much make his feet invincible. 

They go to the safe room to look at their loot and talk about stuff.  Again, the powers that be are invested in keeping Carl pants less and barefoot.  Carl gets a pair of boxers that give him a shield spell once a day.  Mordekai is about to tell h8m something really important right when an admin shows up.

Ch 36

An admin comes in and explains that they are getting so many interviews that they now need a PR person to handle them and Zeb is that person.  Carl has a meltdown.  Donut saves the day by talking about gossip girl and bonding with zeb over it.

While zeb is distracted Carl asks mordekai WTF and mordekai explains that the planet in charge of the game has been taken over by basically the nazis but worse and they are in dire economic straights.  This is very bad for Carl because they dont get paid until the game is over so theyre trying to end the game asap so they can get that money.  The game ends when everyone is dead.

Ch 37 pg 314

They make their way past TONS OF grubs to the old folks Homer's and its cool that theyre all working together and its going well until zeb gets on the chat and tells them to RUN to the next safehouse.  One of the old men is pissing on the wall.  This is bad becuase there's was previously an announcement that if you pissed anywhere other than a bathroom you would be killed.  I think also the rest of your group.  So if Carl and donut do not gtfo they'll get caught in the crossfire.

Ch 38

I remembered it wrong.  You dont die when you pee,  you summon a monster from the bottom level.  This one is level 93.  It's horrible.   Donut casts fog and it allows most of the old folks to get away to the safe room.  Mainly because the monster charges right for Carl.  His shield spell saves him.  Carl is thinking he can make a run for it to the safe room pretty easily now.  Except the monster casts a spell that reverses gravity and Carl is flung painfully to the ceiling.  Also an old lady.  Carl grabs the old lady and barely makes it to the break room.

Ch 39

They watch the recap show.  It's all very upsetting. Tons of people being killed. The most surprising part was they showed how much damage Carl did to the level 83 .monster with his bomb.  It took away 25 percent of its health.

The plan at the beginning was to wait until Carl had access to his shield spell again and use that to get away from the level 93 monster.  Now it sounds like theyre gonna do something more reckless. 

Ch 40 pg 338

They create a contraption that the goblin moped can tow.  It's a bomb deploying ramp.  Donut can pull bombs out of her inventory, onto the top of the contraption and they will slide down the ramp blowing up whatever is behind them.  In this case its the monster.  The basic plan is to go in a square , blowing up the monster , hopefully killing it before they get back to the safe room.  This is more complicated because a bunch of the grubs have evolved to level 3 and theyre much bigger and a pain to avoid whilst driv8ng a goblin moped at top speed. Also, some of the grubs have evolved to the pupa stage.  These are basically human sized flesh mounds.  Also hard to avoid.  They blow up a bunch of these with bombs that also do damage to the monster.  

Something really horrific happens in all this some of the pupas hatch to reveal giant hornets.  I hate this.

The bike starts to overheat as they see the stairs down to the next level.  This brings us to carls super secret plan he hasn't told anyone.  He lays down an oil slick and then has donut teleport them around the corner.  The result is the monster slides down the stairs and is killed.  Carl knew this would happen because Rory the goblin shmanka told him it would.  Mobs cant go down the stairs.  They dissolve half way down.

The problem with this is they dont get credit for killing the monster.  But theyre still alive and Carl likes that.

Ch 41

The old folks Homer's and their old folks go down the stairs.  The hope is on floor three the old folks will be able to make big changes amd be useful.

Carl and donut kill things on their way to thenext safe room where they plan to relax for a while before their interview. A new admin contacts them and says zeb is in timeout and theyre subbing in and has moved their interview to a different show that pays more.

Ch 42

They get on this show and its a much less civilized affair.  The audience is bloodthirsty preteen boys.  The host is an orc.  The first guest is a couple random guys from (guessing based on their names) China.  They're making them play a game where they have to guess if people in a situation live or die.  If they guess right they can teleport out of certain doom.  Through a series of events Carl gets to break in and talk some shit.  The result is he gives these guys some good advice and when theyre teleported back, they make it back to the saferoom.

Also, the host says there's special guests brought in for their VIP guests.  Expecting it to be the girlfriend,  but we'll see who it is.

Ch 43

Carl has some more fun with the ass hole host.  Turns out one the 9th floor part of the thing is a giant battle between royal families and the host is gonna take part this year.  So Carl is gonna kill him when he gets the chance.

Also, the surprise guest isn't the ex, its the crawlers that tried to kill Carl.  Fun reveal, the explosion Carl left for them killed their daughter.  So now its personal.  A d the host gives them a magic item that allows them to find Carl wherever he is.

So Carl has at least 3 "people" that are gonna be trying to kill him.  At least he doesnt have to worry about the host until the 9th floor.

Ch 44

They go back to a safe room and they open loot boxes and watch the recap show.  Then zeb comes back and tells them there's a sex tape going around where Carl fucks the TV host orc with his HUGE dick.  All of this is very political with all these different factions infighting and whatnot.

Ch 45

They go to do the boss fight so if the murderers come after them thy will have the neighborhood map and see them coming.  They find a bunch of dingos in cages and Carl gives them treats and they become friendly.  

They are attacked by a bunch of kobols.  The d8ngos help them fight the kobols.  The boss bad guy is an angry hamster and they defeat it in a pretty easy fight.

Ch 46 pg 403

The prize at the end of the fight is a pet.  Carl makes the mistake of letting donut pick the pet and she picks this weird chicken looking thing.  They talk to mordekai and he tells them that if they dont get the thing to bond with them they won't be able to bring it down to the 3rd floor.

Ch 47 pg 409

Turns out the only thing the weird chicken likes is killing.  So they kill stuff together and they bond.  

Carl notices weird stuff in his inventory.   He realizes this must be agathas stuff because he put her shopp8ng cart and everything in it into his inventory but only gave her back her shopping cart.  Just then agatha comes back.  

Carl now thinks she's an alien plant.

Epilogue 

Odette tells Carl their pet is a velociraptor.  

Bonus material 

Rory the goblin gains sentience. The guards come to kill the goblins because sentient mobs is bad for the game.  While the guards are lining up to murder them rory overheard them saying that Carl and donut.  Now Rory is out for vengeance. 

So Carl had 4 people trying to kill him.

dungeon crawler Carl matt dinniman first half

Carl was "lucky" to be outside when the syndicate repo'd the earth.  He wasn't instantly killed when all buildings were smooshed.  He and his girlfriends cat are gonna go into a DND dungeon and try to survive.

Ch 2 pg 13

Carl and cat make their way through the dungeon to a rat man i a tutorial room.  Carl has to punch a couple goblins before rat man let's him in.  Rat man is named mordekai.

This book has got me. I care if Carl lives or dies.  Here's the key quote from Carl that did it "i didn't have time to think about the stupidity of the jokes."

Ch 3 pg 24

Carl asks mordekai for advice.  Mordekai says if he doesnt do something about the goblins theyre gonna go home and get their whole family and come back.  Carl doesnt love this so he kills the remaining goblins and comes back.  Mordekai then explains that humans aren't special, this is one of many human seeded worlds and humans never do well in these dungeons as theyre too busy asking why this is happening and they get killed waiting around for answers instead of rolling with the punches like the arakocra mordekai comes from.  Omg, you seen regular show?  There's a bird man named mordekai on that show. Wonder if this mordekai is based on that character. 

Ch 4 pg 34

Mordekai explains a bunch of game mechanics to Carl.  The bit that's interesting to me is that this is an intergalactic reality show.  And its kinda like the hunger games in that people can sponsor you and send you stuff.

Ch 5 pg 48

SOme of this world building matt is doing here is dumb. They've been building and destroying planets for thousands of years.  But they only figured out certain really common sense stuff last season.  So they've been doing it wrong for eons?

Carl gets his stuff.  No shoes or pants.  But this is DND so maybe the stuff he got that we haven't had described will be good.  The funnest thing is a legendary pet biscuit. Mordekai tells him its worth hundreds of gold and he's not sure whether to use or sell it and donut solves that problem by jumping up and eating said biscuit. He turns into a gross blob.  Mordekai says it might take 5 to 10 minutes for this to sort itself out.

Ch 6 pg 57

Some of carls gear is pretty good.  He's now effectively the strongest person that's ever lived.  Also, his cat can talk.

Ch 7 pg 62

Cat is super strong now.  But its all superior and what not and Carl tells it to fuck right off.  Cat appologizes and they make due together.

Ch 8

Fighting a lot of rats and cockroaches. 

Ch 9

They find a sage room and it's good and thers a fuzzy dwarf that cooks good food for them.

Ch 10

They fight lots of cockroaxyes.

Ch 11

They get to the cockroach boss fight.  It's a giant Hispanic lady.  They win the fight. 

Ch 12

They get a map from winning the boss fight and are able to find another safe room where mordekai is and he explains some things.  

Ch 13

They do some more exploring and find a dead lady.  She was killed by another player with a shotgun.  They're gonna a track down the son of a witch that did this and kill him.

Ch 14 pg 113

They go back to the food safe room and they watch the ad for what's going to be their show and donut is uoset that they didn't get featured. The food guy tells them sad stuff about how all this has previously worked.

.ch 15

Theyre exploring and they are no good at fighting slimes.  

They make their way to the goblins area and they make a deal to buy a moped off of the goblins for the baggies of meth they have and info as to where they got it.

Ch 16

The goblins go to steal the llamas' meth and Carl and donut steal a bunch of stuff.  

Ch 17

They also use the goblins own gunpowder against them.  They load it all up in a cart and roll it into the goblins boss chamber and blow it up.

Ch 18 

They go back to the room they blew up to do more looting and there's nothing there.

Ch 19 pg 141

Also with the goblins boss was a bunch of babies goblins.  They get an achievement for killing babies. 

They get to a safe room and this one sucks.  No friendly cooking or guidance npc to talk to.  Just a cookie that gives you 10 experience. 

They open a bunch of the achievement boxes They got and Carl feels bad about himself.  But not that bad.  None of this is his fault.  It's the aliens fault.  Carl is just trying to exist.

Ch 20 pg 149

Remember they found rebeca wong's dead body and vowed vengeance against doug m killed them? Well, they find doug m hiding out in a bathroom. Cat wants to magic missile him, but Carl has a better idea, he goes back to the safe room.  Doug has an experience cookie and shiots at donut.  But it doesn't work cause they're in a safe room.  Also Doug has a partner Maggie my who shoots at Carl.  Doug and Maggie are temporarily frozen.  Carl and donut run away.  But Carl leaves some goblin bombs seconds from explosion in a dead rat and a trap.  We will see how that goes.

Ch 21 pg 163

Carl gets on his goblin moped and heads east.  They find spray paint messages and follow them.  They end up next to the burrough boss, which appears to be a giant fleshy packman that moves very fast in a circle.

Ch 22 

They find the people doing the spray painting.  It's a bunch of old people. This blows Carl's mind.  How the hell could a group of elder lies have made it this long? Because their caregivers are with them.  All the stories are sad.  But Carl has a plan.  He's gonna grind and get stronger and then the bunch of them are gonna fight the fleshy packman.  Carl has a plan.

The elderly home is in Wenatchee 143.1 miles by car from Seattle. 

Ch 23 pg 180

They go fight lizaeprd people to level up.  The old folks Homer's specifically told them not to do that cause they are venemous.  But Carl's Cape makes him immune to poison. They do pretty good with donut zapping lizard folk with magic missile and Carl finishing them off.  Donut refuses to actually attack anything cause it is beneath her.  She might get dirty.  We will see how that goes as Carl lights up his penultimate cigarette and they step into a boss fight.

Ch 24

The boss fight is a gym and the lizard folk are dude bros.   Especially the boss.  Carl had a few scrolls of fog and it basically gives him cover enough to take out all the underlings while donut flings magic missile at the boss.  Now it's just Carl and the boss and donut.  The boss is amazingly strong.  Carl whacks him with some weights and he's feeling pretty good about himself and the boss's health is super low.   But the boss gets a hand on Carl's neck.  This is it.  Carl isn't gonna see tomorrow. But no, donut leaps in and bites the boss and does enough damage to get his full attention. We see here that donut is a glass cannon.  One hit and donut is flung across the room looking hella dead.  Carl finishes off the boss and donut is not dead.  

Ch 25 pg 194

They go to a training room to go through their loot and ask mortekai a bunch of questions. He explains that your stats matter when using items. They should have had donut use the scrolls because her intelligence score makes them more powerful. The coolest thing is Carl gets a gauntlet so he can punch things without taking damage.

Ch 26 pg 203

They are ready to fight the boss.  It is the ball of swine.  It's a bunch of pig people in tuxedos and dresses like theyre going to a fancy party but theyre mushed together in a big ball that just.keeps rolling forever it seems.

They  put together a kinda ramp thing that gets the ball of swine stuck in a tunnel. Then they stab it a lot.  Eventually the ball sorta loses cohesion.  Then the pig people separate out.  They are all very confused.  Carl should feel bad about this.  But fear has taken over and so he uses his cool new gauntlet to punch a bunch of relatively harmless pig people to death.

Ch 27

They finish killing the pig people.  Carl also tells donut theyre gonna stick with the old people.  He phrases it like a question but donut knows he's an old softie.  They go down to the second level, except they dont end up in another dungeon.  They end up in an interview room.  They're gonna be on the show.  Donut is soooo excited.