I just started Dungeon Crawler Carl. In it he fights a Spanish speaking boss. The Spanish is not translated (so far) and if you can read it, it really changes the mood and impact of the entire scene.

Are there any other books that hide significant plot points behind the use of foreign language?

Yeah, that was not something I wanted to understand.

Reading Tolstoy's War and Peace as a kid was... weird. It had whole sections in French which I didn't understand at all at the time. They were not very important to the plot but re-reading it later with a help of Google Translate they did change the vibe a bit.

I listened to the audio book and understood snippets and hat was enough to make me super uncomfortable. I love the additional complexity that engendered but at the same time, a little much for a book where the protagonist runs around sporting heart dotted underwear.

One of the later books is pretty dark throughout

Spoiler tag?

EDIT: Thank you

Not a book, but I immediately thought of a point and click game that does something similar. In A Date in the Park, you play a guy who moved to Portugal, but doesn't speak the language. He goes to the park to meet up with the woman he has a date with.

There are several key moments where the language barrier ultimately works against you. I first watched a let's play of the game, where several viewers translated what was being said. Really changes the mood of a seemingly cozy game.

I haven't read the series, but after seeing more context of the scene...wow. That's really bleak for what I assumed would be a more light hearted romp. It does make me actually want to read the books now, but damn.

Reminds me of Chicago (1975)

Oh, it was a taste of what the book series has. DCC is a horror series under the mask of a light hearted dungeon crawler

Bedlam Bride (6)? I’m finding it to be pretty dark. Butcher’s Masquerade (5) had its moments, too.

If that’s all it is, the book more or less covers that bosses and other NPCs are recycled and have their memories tampered with. The book goes more into this later. They could be from any season/planet, too.

Yeah that is what makes the games so fucked up, they couldn't settle for xenocide, they had torture the people they killed for the rest of eternity 'I have no mouth and I must scream' style.

I think a lot of them go dark (I'm mid way through This Inevitable Ruin) but that scene with the hoarder, I dunno, for me, it hit much harder than anything else. I expect tragedy and sadness but that poor lady begging... It just got me.

I think it's maybe the difference in presentation? At least in the audio book, that is a terrified woman in pain begging for help. Other NPC revelations are intellectually tragic etc but personally, nothing came close to that poor woman.

I think of it like the destruction of Alderaan vs that sad ewok death in Jedi. We know a bajillion Alderaanians died but the scene that stuck with me as a kid was that one Ewok checking on and crying over his dead Ewok buddy.

In my head, that scene is much darker than almost anything that follows. There's a lot where if you take a step back and think about it, ooof. But that's scene is the most inescapable gut punch (if you know some Spanish.)

Great series though, mixes the light heartedness with an eventually pretty heavy undertone.

For money no less.

....oh fuck.

Bedlam Bride, too, but I meant Inevitable Ruin. Maybe "heavy" would be more accurate than dark

I was actually thinking of DCC because they give him a skill which is translates to Jai Alai.

I don’t know, in the same book “There sure were a lot of babies in there, Carl” which hits pretty hard on how much murder Carl is doing and on how Donut really isn’t a human being.

Exactly, everyone has so much PTSD. Everyone you have ever known and cared about is already dead and your fighting for your life, is no way to go through a dungeon Carl.

The viewers don't even get to see most of that.

You don't have footnotes with the translation??

Any tricks to read litrpgs and not cringe the entire way through? I couldnt get five pages into that thing

Is the audiobook available anywhere but a horrible megacorp that sucks ayyyse?

On the other hand, it's a book where the almost complete annihilation of the human race happens immediately and we get a running tracker of how many crawlers die every day. The silliness is a mask, not the core.

It's a dark and political story wearing the skin of a light hearted romp like a serial killer with their victim's face.

It takes a book or 2 for the mask to really slip (hence the hammyness of the first book or 2). It's an excellent story, though a little marmite like (you either love it or hate it).

Audiobook bay, I'm seeding 😊

Excellent, thank you so much! That is awesome of you!

Not a book, but the Norweigans at the start of The Thing literally give the whole plot away desperately trying to warn the Americans what the dog is

It loses its focus on the leveling system after the start. Just skim past those parts, they're not necessary to the story.

I watched that movie with some Swedes who were trying to be helpful and told us what the Norwegians were saying :|

Okay, I haven't gotten that far yet. This Inevitable Ruin is the seventh book. I'll be there soon enough. :)

If it helps, DCC is supposed to be over the top and kind of cringe. The tag line "the apocalypse will be televised" isn't for nothing, the whole premise of the book is basically Alien Wipeout meets The Hunger Games. Or Twitch chat runs The Most Dangerous Game might also be apt. The dungeon is meant to be the biggest train wreck that the audience can't look away from.

Taking the five pages thing at face value, you would have quit before any of the litrpg elements, so it's kind of hard to recommend any "tricks". Especially not knowing what turned you off the book/ genre beyond just "cringe". I'm not trying to gatekeep, but if you put the book down within the first chapter, then it's probably not the book/ series for you (and that's okay!), as it goes on it just gets more... more off the rails absurd/ gratuitously violent/ chaotic. The point is spectacle; it's YouTube taken beyond its most logical extreme; Tolkien or Herbert it is not (and that's also okay).

That said, if you are looking to take another shot at the series, I might recommend the DCC audiobooks, if listening to books is your thing. The narrator (Jeff Hays) is phenomenal and the production is masterfully well done.

I read most of them in print, but I switched to audio for the last book when I heard about the vocal talent. Might be the best recording of any book I have ever experienced.

Jim Dale's Harry Potter recordings are still the best I've ever listened to.

I listened to a few of those, many years ago. Jeff Hays is in another league, I was stunned to hear that these audiobooks weren't fully casted.

I'll give them a try.

Worth a reminder that Matt considers himself a horror writer, not a fantasy writer

Myanonymouse too. I'm seeding it there as well

I don't remember exactly now, but yeah I think I had an edition that didn't have any footnotes or translations or commentary, just the original text in Russian and French.

Also not a book, but at the end of Godzilla Minus One, it really takes the surprise and emotion out of it if you know what Schleudersitz means. :/

I forgot about that tracker, going to set a reminder to check back during the next invite sesh. Thanks!

The only way my brain is reading that is "mayo on my mouse", don't know how I should feel about that.

Sounds like an absolute torture with that book

Yeah if anything it's a running theme of the series how the people who are caught in the collapse and the people who are made by the corporation are as abused as the crawlers

Hell, I'm still in book 3 and the whole thing is dark but approached with levity by the absurdity and the degree to which the system AI is keeping it showy.

I think it's the innocent impotence. The crawlers all have agency. The former crawlers are stuck in bad contracts, but they're contracts they signed. The system npcs think they have agency. But the monsters made from the people of the planets? They were just inside and are now experiencing disgusting body horror where they're being forced to kill until they're killed.

I'm not one for spoilers so I'll just say that the seriousness of the situation comes into focus during The Inevitable Ruin. It's still silly but bad things happen and characters respond appropriately!