Popverse's top stories

• Welcome to 2026! Here's how Popverse will continue to be your pop culture tour guide & bestie
• How to watch Dimension 20 in order, from Fantasy High to Gladlands and everything in between
• After Stranger Things: The Duffer Bros. original plans for a sequel set in the 90s

Fans of LitRPG hit Dungeon Crawler Carl have probably noticed a steady shift in tone and scope as the series has gone on. Book One was largely about Carl and his suddenly-intelligent cat surviving in a bizarre alien gameshow. By Book 5 of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, the pair have staged an intergalactic coup and declared war on the people running the most popular (and dangerous) show in the universe. According to author Matt Dinniman, that wasn’t exactly the plan going in. In fact, there wasn’t much of a plan at all.

“When I first started writing it,” Matt Dinniman explained about the Dungeon Crawler Carl series during an interview with Anime Herald. “I was writing a very simple straightforward story about a dude and his cat on an alien gameshow. I wasn’t anticipating such a complicated overarching political plot. As I started working and going on, that’s kind of what happened.”

The evolution of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series partly stems from Matt Dinniman’s writing style, which does not include planning things out in advance. “I’m a pantser,” he explains in the same interview, though he’s got firm plans for the finale of the series. “I’m working on book eight now and it's probably going to be ten books. We’re past the arc of the arrow. We’re on the way back. I kind of see where the arrow is going to land.”

Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 8, titled A Parade of Horribles, is scheduled to be released on May 12, 2026.

Just like yourself, the Popverse staff spends a whole lot of time with our respective noses in respective books. It's why we've come up with stuff like:

• The hottest upcoming fiction
• Queer romance to add to your reading list
• A genre fiction literary column called If It Bleeds, We Read

...and a whole lot more. Join our metaphorical library, won't you? There are no late fees and you can be as loud as you want, so long as the people you live with are OK with it.