Carl’s Doomsday Scenario Review: The Story Gets Bigger

Rating: 5/5 ⭐️

I started Carl’s Doomsday Scenario wanting more of the same. Another fun, easy listen with Carl trying to outthink the dungeon, Princess Donut making every situation louder, and Jeff Hays somehow performing the whole thing by himself.

That is exactly what I got.

But Book 2 does not feel like Matt Dinniman simply found a winning formula and ran it again. The familiar parts are still there, while the story underneath them becomes larger and more complicated. By the end, Carl and Donut are no longer merely two popular crawlers trying to reach the next floor. They are becoming pieces in a game involving corporations, sponsors, gods and other crawlers who have reasons to want them dead.

I gave it five stars.

Still an incredibly easy audiobook to fall into

Jeff Hays remains a huge part of why these books are so easy to consume.

He has already established Carl’s exhausted irritation, Donut’s imperious confidence and the dungeon AI’s enthusiasm for making everything worse. Book 2 adds more crawlers, NPCs and quest characters, but the audiobook never feels like someone reading a list of names, statistics and dialogue tags.

I was new to LitRPG when I started the series, so I had no idea what to expect. Because I am also into gaming, I enjoyed the skill descriptions, inventory management, class choices and constant notifications. Hays turns all of that into part of the performance.

I made the longer case for the audio experience in my review of the first Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook. Book 2 confirms that it was not a one-book novelty. This is still the version of the series I want.

Less “Goddammit, Donut,” more room for the story

I expected “Goddammit, Donut” and “New Achievement!” to do a lot of the comedic work again. Both are still part of the series, but they do not arrive as constantly as they did in the first book.

I liked that.

The jokes have not disappeared. Donut remains Donut, and the dungeon still finds creative ways to humiliate Carl. The book simply does not keep poking the same bruise because it received a laugh the first time.

More of the comedy now comes from the characters and the increasingly ridiculous rules around them. Donut has followers to impress. Mongo has become part pet, part weapon and part outrage generator. Carl is getting better at recognising what the dungeon wants from him, then finding the most destructive interpretation of its rules.

Book 1 could always fall back on the absurdity of a man in boxer shorts entering an alien death game with a newly talking cat. Book 2 no longer needs to. The premise has settled in, so the characters and the wider system have to carry more weight.

They do.

The third floor feels like a world, not another level

The first book establishes the crawl. The second starts revealing who profits from it.

Carl and Donut enter the third floor expecting another collection of monsters, safe rooms and stairwells. Instead, they find an Over City with its own history, competing storylines and quests that keep colliding with one another. The ruined circus, the Skyfowl settlement, Miss Quill and the Swordsmen all appear to belong to separate problems until the book starts pulling them together.

Carl also has to choose a race and class, work with Katia and deal with quests that cannot always be solved by finding the correct monster and killing it.

The floor is not just a set of dungeon rules to master. Producers want good television, sponsors can influence storylines, and Borant wants the season to end profitably. Even the AI does not always seem interested in helping the company running it.

Carl is learning that survival depends on understanding all of those competing interests.

Carl and Donut are becoming a real partnership

The first book gives Carl and Donut an immediately funny dynamic. He handles the planning and danger. She acts as if the apocalypse is another stage built for her.

That relationship is still funny, but it feels less one-sided now.

Donut is not simply the cat Carl has to protect. She notices when he is struggling. She understands more of what they have lost than she usually admits, and she is becoming capable of supporting him when he cannot keep performing the role of the calm, practical survivor.

Carl is changing too. He keeps choosing to help people even when the safer option is to leave. The dungeon repeatedly turns that instinct against him, converting compassion into a storyline, an achievement or another opportunity for the audience to watch him suffer.

He knows it is happening. He still cannot walk away.

The story is easy to enjoy, but the ending is dense

For most of its runtime, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario remains a very easy listen. The final stretch asks more from you.

Several explosions, magical effects, reward rules and corporate interventions happen close together. I finished the book entertained, but I had to stop and work through exactly how Carl created the object named after the book, why Katia’s explosion mattered, and how 83 Celestial boxes became one of Borant’s biggest problems.

None of that lowered my rating. It showed me how far the series had moved since Carl first walked down a staircase in his underwear.

Everything below contains full spoilers.

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario ending explained

How Carl creates the Doomsday Scenario

Miss Quill has been using her undead husband, Remex, as a Soul Leech Capacitor. Once her plan falls apart, the soul crystal powering it becomes unstable. Its explosion will kill crawlers and NPCs who cannot reach a stairwell in time.

Carl and Donut could save themselves, but Katia and many others would still be caught in the blast. Carl puts the soul crystal inside the Sheol Glass Reaper Case he found earlier, containing the immediate explosion, then pulls the case into his inventory. The dungeon recognises it as a new item: Carl’s Doomsday Scenario.

It is a city-destroying explosion sealed inside a protective case. It cannot be stabilised, and it will detonate almost instantly if Carl removes it from his inventory. Carl has gained something powerful enough to threaten almost anything in the dungeon, but using it may kill him too.

Why Katia’s explosion and the 83 boxes matter

Carl had already planted explosives around the Swordsmen Depot and left the detonator with Katia. The wild magic from Remex should have stopped it from working, but the AI exempts the detonator. Katia’s explosion disrupts the larger magical disaster, saving crawlers and NPCs who otherwise would have died.

That success qualifies everyone who survived the relevant group quest for rewards, which become 83 Celestial Prize boxes. Borant uses its single season veto to cancel the distribution before almost anyone can open theirs. Quan Ch gets his open in time, but Borant burns an emergency power very early in the season to prevent a much larger payout.

The point is not just that Carl misses out on loot. He risked his life, saved people and earned the reward under the dungeon’s rules, only for Borant to take it away because honouring it would cost too much. He says he should stop helping people and concentrate on grinding levels instead. The rest of the book makes that hard to believe.

What the ending changes

Carl also has a private breakdown before the interview with Odette, and Donut is the one who helps him recover. It is a small moment, but it makes their partnership feel less one-sided.

Odette then makes the bigger problem clear. Carl and Donut’s leaderboard numbers are bounties, meaning other crawlers can profit from killing them. She also warns Carl about Grull and about Hekla’s interest in Donut and Mordecai. Carl and Donut leave the floor stronger, but far more visible to everyone who wants to use, buy or kill them.

Five stars, and I am deliberately slowing down

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario gave me the same easy, funny listening experience I wanted from the first book. It also reduced its dependence on the most familiar jokes and pushed the larger story forward much further than I expected.

The ending took some work to understand. Once I understood it, I appreciated how much it had changed.

Carl now carries an explosion capable of destroying a city. Donut is both his closest companion and a prize other crawlers may want to claim. The company running the dungeon has already been forced to use its veto, and the AI may be developing priorities of its own.

I want to start The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook immediately.

I am pacing myself instead. These books are so easy to consume that slowing down may be the only way I do not burn through the entire series at once. Here are some of the best Sci-fi series to read in 2026 if you are also pacing yourself.