Two star reviews are reserved for books that were so bad I did not finish, but had something enjoyable about them. This gets 2.5 because I finished it.

So I want to start by saying this is not a good book, and I would never recommend someone else read it. That being said, the good things about this book are that the action is fun, the characters are sometimes tolerable, and the author does a great job at two things: setting up seemingly impossible problems that the characters solve in interesting ways, and really getting a reader curious about what's going to happen next. This last one is somewhat clumsy and heavy handed, but it is very effective, so credit where credit is due.

This book is also incredibly racist and misogynistic. I'm pretty sure the author thinks most people in South America do not live or sleep in houses, either that or he thinks the continent is on the other side of the planet from North America. The book is full of gross sexist jokes, oftentimes in places and situations where they make no sense. The main character is practically sexless in the ways he responds to conversations about sex or sexuality, but the world around him is disturbingly horny, with the narrative pausing occasionally to breathlessly describe the details of an alien woman's gigantic boobs.

Also I'm pretty sure the author thinks the MC is a good person, but he chose to rob a group of people (racialized and otherized) who just helped him, then kill their leader. He accidently kills all their kids when he does this. How does this make him feel? Just kinda bad! Like a bit of a jerk! And how dare they make him feel bad about it (his words not mine.)

I use this detail to illustrate how incredibly bad at character writing the author is, at least in this first book. He really wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to write a fun and fast paced sleazy trashy adventure book, which he's pretty good at doing! But he also wants his characters to be complex and deep, he wants them to make hard and complicated choices and deal with the consequences both internally and externally, he wants to satirize our world and say something deep and meaningful about it, and at all these things he is an absolute failure. Also his worldbuilding is terrible. What a waste of an intergalactic society.

All in all I will not ever recommend this book, and will actively discourage others from reading it.

Grimdark but add a touch of humor and a talking cat with the sass and you might as well call Matt Dinniman a fisherman because my attention? HOOKED.

I've heard so many good and bad things about this book so I was quite apprehensive about being disappointed once I started. You can imagine my surprise when it went above and beyond my initial expectations! Instead of just being within the realm of campy, the serious and often real stakes that Carl and the talking cat, Princess Donut, endured help cement the legitimacy of the story.

The story revolves around our protagonist, Carl, who was literally caught with his pants down as all semblance of society and life as we know it disappears in the blink of an eye. He enters a dungeon together with his cat, Princess Donut, to compete in a literal life-and-death fight against Elden Ring-esque monsters employing RPG game mechanisms.

If you're the type of person who enjoys playing RPG games and probably uses Twitch, then this would be right up your alley. If you haven't played any games recently, then the explanations to get the ball rolling might get a little too info-dumpy and might affect your enjoyment of the series.

I suggest giving this first book a try because there's so much to love! 

To start with, I loved the characters! Carl is a no-nonsense practical guy who's just here to survive despite the dungeon AI's foot fetish obsession and the ethical situations he constantly finds himself plagued with. I like how straight and moral he is, qualities that are hard to remember and hold on to once the rules reward murder and destruction. And there is a lot of murder and destruction that goes on in this book. Like <I>please-look-at-trigger-warnings-before-you-cast-judgement</i> a lot.

His foil is Princess Donut, a cat blessed with sentience and charisma. She is haughty and proud tempered with her love for Carl and her passion for the camera. She'd make a good streamer - one that can potentially make it big on both Youtube AND Twitch. Her antics and choices are ostentatious, which makes Carl's unintentional catchphrase of "Goddamnit, Donut" all the more humorous.

I'm a huge sucker for interconnected alien or monster species that thrive within a particular environment. If you like the anime Dungeon Meshi, I think you'd enjoy this. We are met with a variety of creatures that Carl and Donut fight for experience. They're not just mindless creatures; they are involved in politics and instinct within their race and the dungeon's rules. Although they're NPCs, you catch bits and pieces of their lore through the AI's description which hints towards a bigger story than what we see in this book.

One of the highlights of this story is the streaming concept. It reminds me of the manhwa "Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint" so if you enjoyed that, you might enjoy this as well. I like that the characters are challenged by a third aspect - to make their survival as spectacular and as captivating to the average viewer. Carl and Donut's murder spree - because killing sentient and self-aware NPCs to survive is STILL murder - is televised and weighed by billions of lives and in turn, they continue to survive and thrive due to an ambivalent viewer's interest.

There's a lot to unpack there but on the surface, I've found myself enjoying it to even let out more than a chuckle or two. It is a funny book if your sense of humor is wry and dry, which only Andy Weir has wielded masterfully so far.

I highly recommend this book! It's a good book to read if you're looking to be entertained and you want to root for characters that continue to persist against all foreseeable odds. If you don't find the

mass murder, genocide, infanticide, senicide, cannibalism, implied rape, filicide, drug abuse

palatable concepts for the sake of entertainment and to show the bleak, depressing world they live in or you're not a big fan of complex game descriptions, then this might not be the best book for you. And that's okay! 

Overall, I'm off to purchase the second book to figure out what the hell happens next. 

Fun! Devastating! Well-rounded and loveable characters! The horror of corporations and becoming naught but a tool in its machine! Keeping your humanity and kindness in impossible situations! The horrific loss of life for both the “good guys” and the “monsters” they must kill to survive, and the morality of it all!  Funny and clever! I loved it!