This Dungeon Crawl-Themed Book Series Is Like Reading A Video Game

If you've ever read a book and thought, "This would be a lot cooler if the main characters knew their stats and could see their health points," then you might want to check out the new print editions of the popular Dungeon Crawler Carl series, which is getting hardcover editions for the first time.

Written by Matt Dinniman, the popular book series belongs to a subgenre of fiction called "LitRPGs" that integrates video game tropes like stats, health bars, and inventory screens directly into the story. Rather than being a choose-your-own-adventure story or a tabletop RPG, LitRPG books are prose novels where the characters interact with the world in a game-like way--often because they are transported into an alternate video game reality or because outside forces morph the real world into a game-like setting.

In Dungeon Crawler Carl, aliens have turned Earth into a 10-floor mega-dungeon, and each book in the series represents a different level of the dungeon with its own environmental identity, characters Carl meets, and objectives he completes in hopes of saving humanity.

If that sounds like a series you'd like to read, you're in luck--the first three Dungeon Crawler Carl books are getting print editions for the first time. The franchise began as an audiobook and ebook series, but now you can grab a hardcover copy of the first book at Amazon for just $20 (was $30). Hardcover editions of books two and three are also available for preorder.

• Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1 (Hardcover) -- $20 ($30)
• Carl's Doomsday Scenario: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 2 (Hardcover) -- $27 ($30) | Preorder, releases September 27
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 3 (Hardcover) -- $27 ($30) | Preorder, releases October 22

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For now, these three books are the only entries in the Dungeon Crawl Carl series with hardcover editions. Presumably, books four, five, and six will also get hardcover editions in the coming months, and there's also an upcoming seventh book on the way that will likely get print versions as well. However, if you don't want to wait for the hardcover releases, you can also grab the remaining Dungeon Crawler Carl novels in paperback.

• The Gate of the Feral Gods: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 4 (Paperback) -- $18
• The Butcher's Masquerade: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 5 (Paperback) -- $20
• The Eye of the Bedlam Bride: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 6 (Paperback) -- $19.31

The Dungeon Crawler Carl series is also available in audiobook and ebook formats. In fact, the audiobook versions are how the series became so popular and considered by many to be the ideal format to experience Car's adventures. You can grab them all via Audible, either as individual books or through an Audible subscription. As for the digital ebook versions, you can pick up the Kindle editions of all six books at Amazon, or sign up for Kindle Unlimited and get them all for just the price of the monthly subscription. If you're not already a subscriber, you can get three months of Kindle Unlimited for the price of one right now--that's just $12 for three months instead of $36--making it the quickest and most affordable way to check out the series.