Articles tagged with: Reviews

Book: Dungeon Crawler Carl

How to speak about this book without spoiling things... The Setting is: Carl just got out of his house to catch his cat, Princess Donut, when suddenly all buildings and structures in Earth collapse, killing everything inside. Then some alien voice announce that survivors must go through an intergalactic TV-show through a deadly 18-levels dungeon if they wish to survive. Oh, and the cat becomes "a crawler" and can speak.

If the argument left you thinking WTF, I know, it also did to me. But with the book being such a success, I decided to give it a go anyway. And I can say that now I'm hooked to it, I already began with the 2nd title. It is a very nerdy book: RPGs, videogames, superheroes, and lots of humour. Despite the absurd story, everything else connects not in a cohesive way, but in a very entertaining combination. The fancy cat has high intelligence and charisma, so you have her from charming NPCs to brush her, to shooting magic missiles to enemies and teleporting herself. Carl instead becomes mostly accidentally an unarmed melee tank, but also suitably good with explosives. The enemies, in a maybe distant nod to The Witcher, have their lives and feelings and points of view, so there might be a way to avoid having to fight with all those goblins... or perhaps not.

I really don't want to spoil anything because, at least for the first title, you easily align with the journey of discovery of the main character; He is as surprised as you of everything that is happening, and for the most part, he's just a regular guy lucky enough to survive the alien "attack" but unlucky to not have brought pants and boots to the dungeon.

If you enjoy either or both pen & paper and/or computer RPGS, grab the book and read it.

Publication date: 2026-09-23

Book: Artemis

Artemis was the last book from Andy Weir that I had pending to read. After enjoying both The Martian and Project Hail Mary, why not the book that was written in between?

It happens that this title is sub-par compared with the others. The setting is appealing: humanity has a big moon base, with people permanently living there; The protagonist, a young smuggler, gets into trouble; and, of course, things escalate, and the issues just keep multiplying and growing. The scientific pillar seems to be there (I'm not a scientist, but at least does not sound like pure bullshit), and I do not doubt the effort put in all of it.

But the truth is that the story is a bit silly, predictable, and very unoriginal. The smart-ass protagonist is as clever at times as apparently dumb then taking certain decisions. The events that unfold are not exciting enough to keep me awake "just for a few pages more", and most of the jokes this time land as bad. Maybe the author trying something different (female main character, Arabic, shady background instead of "a pure good guy" ...), perhaps the story was simply too normal, but it didn't hook me.

I finished the book mostly because I was already on it, and it is not bad, but ranks way lower than either of the other Andy Weir titles. There's plenty of better sci-fi literature to read instead.

PS: Long time since my last post. I have a few things stacked, so I'll now probably write a new entry every few days.

Publication date: 2026-09-13

Books: Resident Evil: Code Veronica - Book 1, Resident Evil: Code Veronica - Book 2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica - Book 3, Resident Evil: Code Veronica - Book 4

This is going to be a very brief review. If you don't know what Resident Evil: Code Veronica is about, I encourage you to stop reading here and instead go to the Wikipedia page, then maybe come back. Still reading? Good!

The comics are very faithful to the videogame, both in characterization, events, and even the dialogues are at times an exact copy of the game transcript. Some scenes have small differences, though, and the general narrative is maybe not converted the best way into a comic. The art and drawing are good, always following the game style.

It's all about the expectations: If you want a thrilling zombie story, there are way better options out there. If you want a Resident Evil videogame adaptation to comic, then you have a decent one.

Publication date: 2025-09-01

Book: Art & Arcana: A Visual History (Dungeons & Dragons)

August has been for me the Dungeons & Dragons themed month. After the Lore & Legends book, I picked another history lesson book: Art & Arcana. As the title hints, the main topic is about how D&D art and style has changed during on each edition; From the original, black and white and a bit amateurish drawings, to the astounding coloured depictions of adventures, adventurers, and monsters of the later editions.

One thing that stands out when you read the book, is that there is a lot of information. It is not a mere visual journey, and even focusing only on the textual content, I feel the quality and depth of it to be superior to Lore & Legends. There are so many interesting stories and details of the evolution of TSR, its illustrators, the art direction... I went for it because of the drawings, but it was a pleasant surprise to find so much content.

The illustrations are spectacular and, of course, the main focus. Being able to see all five evolutions of many creatures, book covers, the TSR logo itself, even some maps! Going from clearly hand-drawn irregular maps to the ultra-detailed and dense most recent iterations is such a joy. Learning the fun source of quite a few monsters (spoiler: plastic children toys), and then watching how they evolved into more serious and colourful depictions, is also very cool.

I've always been drawn into D&D because of its amazing book covers and incredible drawings, and this book contains the reason why. Moreover, In my case I began with the 2nd edition and its more professional but still mostly mono-color images, so experiencing how much everything has evolved, and expanded, and matured, was very fascinating.

A remarkable reference book.

Publication date: 2024-08-31