Books like Dungeon Crawler Carl, from someone still not over it

There is a specific moment after finishing a Dungeon Crawler Carl book. You sit there, holding your Kindle or staring at your car stereo, and you think: well, now what. Nothing else is going to be about an angry man and a talking cat dismantling galactic capitalism from inside a murder dungeon. And that is true. Nothing else is exactly that.

But DCC is really several great books wearing one leather jacket, and each of the things it does brilliantly, the comedy, the found family, the crunchy system, the slow-burn rage at the machine, is done brilliantly somewhere else too. So instead of a flat list, here is a sorted one, by what you actually miss. (If you are somehow here without having read Carl yet: the reading order is here, and I envy you the next month of your life.)

If you miss the banter and the found family

• He Who Fights with Monsters by Shirtaloon. The genre's other reigning heavyweight, and the most common answer to "what next." Jason Asano has Carl's gift for mouthing off at cosmic authority, and twelve books of it are waiting, with book 13 arriving October 6, 2026.
• The Wandering Inn by pirateaba. Slower, softer entry, enormous emotional payoff. An innkeeper, a world, and a cast of hundreds you will come to love. The word count is measured in geologic units. Do not be scared. Be a little scared.

If you miss the dungeon itself

• Chrysalis by RinoZ. Lives inside a dungeon, like Carl, except this time you are the monster. Funny, warm, and secretly a civilization-builder. All nine books in order here.
• Defiance of the Fall by TheFirstDefier. Earth gets hooked into a multiverse-spanning System overnight. Apocalypse-scale stakes, relentless progression, and a very long, very satisfying catalog to binge.

If you miss the anger under the jokes

This is the part of DCC people underrate. It is not just funny; it is furious, at spectacle, at exploitation, at systems that eat people. Two picks carry that fire:

• Unbound by Nicoli Gonnella. Trades the jokes for weight, keeps the moral seriousness. A System that changes what you are, and a protagonist paying the bill. Twelve books, in order, here.
• Super Powereds by Drew Hayes. Not LitRPG, but if what you loved was underdogs versus an indifferent institution, with a cast that becomes family, this superhero-college saga delivers it by the truckload.

If you miss the numbers going up

• The Primal Hunter by Zogarth. Pure, uncut progression. Jake is not here to save the world; he is here to hunt, level, and win, and the series is admirably honest about it. Book 16 lands at the end of July 2026, because this genre does not sleep.
• Cradle by Will Wight. No stat screens, but the cleanest power-climb ever written, and it is finished, all twelve books, no waiting. After years of tracking release dates, a completed series feels like a spa day.

The honest caveat

None of these are Carl. The specific alchemy of Matt Dinniman's series, the tonal whiplash from fart joke to genuine grief inside one page, the cat, the way it makes you care about doomed strangers on a leaderboard, is not really replicable. What these series offer is not a replacement. It is a way to keep the lights on in that part of your brain until The Beautiful Place gets a release date.

The cure for finishing a great series is not a copy of it. It is a different great series.

Four of the picks above sit on our curated shelf, and the rest are never far from it. If you want to see what is landing across the whole genre this season, the new releases guide is the running scoreboard.