I just started Dungeon Crawler Carl. In it he fights a Spanish speaking boss. The Spanish is not translated (so far) and if you can read it, it really changes the mood and impact of the entire scene.
Are there any other books that hide significant plot points behind the use of foreign language?
This is done with a fictional language in the first Nier game. You spend the whole time slaughtering hordes of enemies, but then new game+ gives them subtitles and makes you do it all again with context. It’s grim.
spoiler: what was said translated.
Yeah, that was not something I wanted to understand.
I listened to the audio book and understood snippets and hat was enough to make me super uncomfortable. I love the additional complexity that engendered but at the same time, a little much for a book where the protagonist runs around sporting heart dotted underwear.
I haven’t read the series, but after seeing more context of the scene…wow. That’s really bleak for what I assumed would be a more light hearted romp. It does make me actually want to read the books now, but damn.
Oh, it was a taste of what the book series has. DCC is a horror series under the mask of a light hearted dungeon crawler
Exactly, everyone has so much PTSD. Everyone you have ever known and cared about is already dead and your fighting for your life, is no way to go through a dungeon Carl.
It’s a dark and political story wearing the skin of a light hearted romp like a serial killer with their victim’s face.
It takes a book or 2 for the mask to really slip (hence the hammyness of the first book or 2). It’s an excellent story, though a little marmite like (you either love it or hate it).
In my head, that scene is much darker than almost anything that follows. There’s a lot where if you take a step back and think about it, ooof. But that’s scene is the most inescapable gut punch (if you know some Spanish.)
Great series though, mixes the light heartedness with an eventually pretty heavy undertone.
I don’t know, in the same book “There sure were a lot of babies in there, Carl” which hits pretty hard on how much murder Carl is doing and on how Donut really isn’t a human being.
One of the later books is pretty dark throughout
I think a lot of them go dark (I’m mid way through This Inevitable Ruin) but that scene with the hoarder, I dunno, for me, it hit much harder than anything else. I expect tragedy and sadness but that poor lady begging… It just got me.
I think it’s the innocent impotence. The crawlers all have agency. The former crawlers are stuck in bad contracts, but they’re contracts they signed. The system npcs think they have agency. But the monsters made from the people of the planets? They were just inside and are now experiencing disgusting body horror where they’re being forced to kill until they’re killed.
