I entered into this book already predisposed to like it. Noobtown by Ryan Rimmel is one of my favourite LitRPG series and I was looking forward to seeing what he could do with a fresh series.

And I wasn’t disappointed.

Deepwater Dungeon sets us up with an unlikely hero. Sir Crabby McCrabbington, first of his name, is a crab. Just a normal crab, until a series of utterly unlikely events occur that causes him to gain sentience, classes and levels. After a brief period of the universe trying to come to grips with this, he finds himself in a dungeon, with the only way out to level and grow.

If you’ve read Ryan Rimmel’s work before you know what to expect. It’s a fun book, with a lot of jokes and lighthearted humour, an interesting look at the standard LitRPG formula and decent action scenes. Sir Crabby is a likeable protagonist and the world is interesting, with more depth than you’d expect for a jokey novel. It was a lot of fun to read and I managed to get through it really quickly.

I do have some complaints though. To begin with, the story takes a little while to get going. The first fifth of the book is mostly just justifying why we’re paying attention to this one crab. And the references, though mostly subtle and fun, do go overboard occasionally. For example I don’t know why we had an extended reference to Die Hard 3, a reference moreover that didn’t actually change it much but basically just ripped out a few scenes wholesale. And there’s some spectators to the whole thing who, apart from one or two bits, didn’t really add anything except vague commentary.

Those aside I really enjoyed this book. There were some really gripping and horrifying moments and I can’t remember the last time I felt so hurt on behalf of a LitRPG protagonist. The next book is set up with an interesting premise and I’m really looking forward to reading it.