TLDR: Comparing Dungeon Crawler Carl vs ACOTAR is mostly an exercise in listing differences. Genre, tone, how they got published, how people actually consume them, all opposite. The one place they meet is what happens to readers once they’re in, because both series turn people into members rather than fans. I’ve read both and I’d hand you either one.
Two of my favorite book series are a faerie romance and a story about a man fighting through an alien dungeon in his underwear with his ex-girlfriend’s cat.
Getting Into ACOTAR
I was just getting back into reading and ACOTAR was everywhere on social media.
I held off for a few months. The honest reason is that it was mostly girls reading it and I felt weird about being the guy who picked it up.
Then I decided IDGAF. If I’m the only guy reading it, fine, I’ll jump in.
Best reading call I’ve made in years. I went through the whole series and kept right on going into the rest of Sarah J. Maas’s books. If ACOTAR lands for you, Alchemised and The Kindred’s Curse Saga live in the same neighborhood.
Getting Into Dungeon Crawler Carl
Carl showed up on my feed the same way. Everyone was talking about it, I got FOMO, I started it.
That one never felt weird to pick up, which is funny given the premise. ACOTAR is a fantasy series about faeries and courts. Carl is a guy in his boxers being forced through a lethal dungeon crawl on intergalactic television, with a cat in a tiara doing colour commentary. The faeries are what I was self-conscious about.
Dungeon Crawler Carl vs ACOTAR: Almost Nothing Lines Up
Put them side by side and they miss each other on every single measure.
ACOTAR is romantasy. Carl is LitRPG, which means stat blocks, loot drops and level-ups printed on the page while you read. ACOTAR came out through Bloomsbury in 2015. Carl started life as a web serial on Royal Road and built a Patreon with roughly 15,000 paying members before publishing took it seriously.
ACOTAR gets read. Carl gets listened to. Jeff Hays narrates the audiobooks and the audio outsells print and ebook put together, which almost never happens to a book.
ACOTAR wants you invested in a relationship and plays every beat of it completely straight. Carl wants you laughing at a man being tortured for ratings, and gives the cat top billing while it happens.
Hand both to somebody who’s read neither and they’d never guess the same person recommended them.
The Fandoms Are the Same Animal
This is the part I find genuinely interesting.
Both series have followings that go well past enjoying a book. The volume of posts. The merch. Entire communities built around one series. People turning up in costume as the characters.
The numbers are just as strange. Carl has sold over 10 million copies, which is not where a Royal Road serial is supposed to end up. Peacock ordered a TV series in June 2026 with Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door producing, Matt Dinniman has seven books out with an eighth this year, and he plans to finish at ten.
Sarah J. Maas operates on a scale that’s hard to picture. She sold 4.83 million print copies between January and early June of 2024, according to Circana BookScan. The top ten bestselling adult books released across that whole year managed 3.14 million between them.
And when she announced two more ACOTAR books back in March, people went through her phrasing line by line hunting for clues about whose story she’s telling.
They Got There From Opposite Directions
ACOTAR built its base in romance, overwhelmingly with women, and grew until guys like me wandered in. Carl started with a mostly male LitRPG crowd and did the same thing in reverse. Slate’s piece on the series opens on a 68-year-old woman who can’t remember the last time a book series had her this hooked.
Same destination, opposite roads. Neither series belongs to whoever found it first anymore.
Which One To Start With
Depends entirely on what you want out of the next two weeks.
Go ACOTAR if you want to get emotionally wrecked and you can be patient through a first book that’s noticeably weaker than everything after it. Go Carl if you want to laugh out loud on a run, and get that one on audio, because Hays doing forty voices is half the experience.
If neither premise grabs you but you still want fantasy that hits hard, Blood Over Bright Haven is the one I keep pressing on people.
Try This First
Go pick up the book you’ve been quietly avoiding because you decided you’re not the target audience.
Mine was ACOTAR and I burned a few months on it. Whatever yours is, that hesitation is doing nothing for you.