The series is titled after the first book. The first few were generally good and enjoyable. The writing is a bit wonky and takes some to get used to.

My biggest complaint is that the book is filled with deus ex machina solutions and Diabolus ex machina problems to ramp things up that aren’t really earned.

ahh that's cool that he is a favourite! i did vaguely know he was buddies with lovecraft but that was the sum of my knowledge about him before this.

i have finished the collection now and very much enjoyed his descriptions of settings and objects, so while many of the stories were not quite my jam i did appreciate his prose and would like to explore more! alas i am not a words person (nor a brains one) myself so that is about all the detail i can give. though i may say it started some cogs turning, i would like to start a drawing based on a setting in one of the stories because it became so vivid in my mind.

Thanks mate, looks like a good post to come back to

I hadn't really thought about it, I just got negative vibes I guess. Since you asked I went back to reread it and examine what I was feeling.

It's the most-watched game show in the galaxy!

Straight away, the framing of it is that it's all a big game, which combined with the general opinions being about how it's so funny and that it's "popcorn" and whatever puts me off because I read this as it being unlikely to take anything seriously.

In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth--from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds to all the trucks and cars--collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.

The buildings and all the people inside, they've all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.

Great. If this were it I'd be in.

Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your views and your followers. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.

You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.

You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following.

Now it's a battle royale game, which I'm not into, and it's all about this streamer/reality tv culture that I'm really not into. Like the very first line this screams to me that there won't be much weight to anything. The comedy and fighting will all be over the top just for the shock factor which means it'll probably have to escalate more and more each time.

That's the only way to truly survive in this game, with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.

And then finally, I read this as "Do you like dei ex machina? We've got 'em!" Can't say I do.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.

It just sounds like it'll all be intolerable reddit-humour. Am I wrong? Sure, probably 🤷‍♂️ But with essentially infinity books to read, I'm fine with judging them by their covers sometimes. And again, I wouldn't have gone into detail because I don't want to yuck anyone's yum, but I did get asked.

I just finished Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, which I quite liked, and am now on to Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

Bit of a shift!

It’s popular for a reason. That reason is all of the books are extremely enjoyable

Please dive in, they’re so fun

Hey, I'm not saying they're bad, I'm glad you enjoy them. It just doesn't sound like it's for me and that's fine too.

Hey, I’m saying they’re good, I don’t care you don’t read them. It just doesn’t sound like these comments are for us and that’s fine too.

Cool, thanks for the detailed response.

Not all books (or movies or games) are for everyone, and as you said, there are more books than what we can read in our lifetime, so nothing wrong with judging a few by their covers.

I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum

lol, this is first time I am reading these combination of words, I am going to steal them!

Ah, that can be annoying. Thanks for the info!