I was gifted the first Dungeon Crawler Carl book by a friend.
I was skeptical. I read the first book at their insistence, and I had mixed feelings about it. I thought some of the writing was lazy, and first person perspective was probably a mistake. The format I was using was audio book and Jeff Hayes was absolutely crushing his performance. That helped a ton.
The atmosphere of the whole thing, with Jeff Hayes's narration, had a hook on me though. Somehow the book just had a vibe. Kinda like some of your favorite cult movies, maybe the fifth element for example. That movie is groan-worthy at times, with lazy writing, sometimes poor acting (despite the amazing cast) and sheer ridiculousness. But it has an atmosphere that overcomes all of that. The Carl series has some of that atmosphere. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but since I needed another book and didn't know immediately what to read, I went ahead and picked the second book with my audible monthly choice. Listening to the second book, I'm in. I'll do the whole series now (I'm through the 3rd book at this point).
The writing improves a little bit for the second and third books. The narration is off the chain. And I feel like it "get it" in a way that I didn't immediately. It's kinda evil dead meets fifth element. It's like... a bad movie that you love. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure. It's charming, and not at all serious.
If you're at all curious, give it a try. but definitely audiobook.