You finished Dungeon Crawler Carl. All seven books. You know the feeling after book seven: something between grief and withdrawal. The queue is empty and nothing looks right.

This list is for that moment. Five books that match what made the series work: a protagonist worth fighting for, worlds with rules that actually matter, and the kind of pacing that makes you miss your stop.

If something here catches your eye, hit Add to Library to save it to your Siftivo shelf.

The list
Red Rising cover

Red Rising

PB Pierce Brown
2014 · 416p

The underdog-vs-empire book with the highest stakes per page.

Darrow is a Red, the lowest caste in a color-coded society on Mars, raised to believe his people are terraforming the planet for future generations. They're not. What follows is an infiltration story, a survival game, and the start of a revolution, told at a pace that will feel instantly familiar to anyone who just powered through seven DCC volumes. Pierce Brown writes action the way Matt Dinniman writes chaos: kinetic, personal, and with real consequences for characters you actually care about.

Science FictionDystopian
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The Will of the Many cover

The Will of the Many

JI James Islington
2023 · 630p

Slower, smarter, and rewards every page of patience.

Vis Telimus is an orphan with a dangerous secret inside an empire that demands total submission. He infiltrates the Catenan Republic's elite academy, hiding his true identity while hunting for something that could bring the whole system down. This one plays more like a chess match than a gauntlet, less breakneck than DCC, but the same underlying pleasure: a protagonist who's always three moves ahead in a world where three moves ahead barely keeps you alive.

Fantasy
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Project Hail Mary cover

Project Hail Mary

AW Andy Weir
2022 · 496p

The one where the main character solves an extinction-level crisis mostly through enthusiasm and panic.

Ryland Grace wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory of why he's there. He figures it out in real time, and so do you. Andy Weir's genius is making hard science feel like watching someone improvise their way out of a catastrophe. The humor, especially once the book's best surprise shows up, runs at the same wavelength as Carl and Donut. Warm, clever, and completely unwilling to let you go.

Science Fiction
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Dark Matter cover

Dark Matter

BC Blake Crouch
2016 · 368p

Two hundred pages of pure forward momentum disguised as a novel.

Jason Dessen, a physics professor with a quiet life in Chicago, is kidnapped and wakes up in a reality where none of his choices happened. His wife is a stranger. His son doesn't exist. And the version of himself who arranged all this isn't finished yet. Blake Crouch strips the story down to its bones: no fat, no meandering. If DCC hooked you with its refusal to slow down, Dark Matter applies that same instinct to a completely different genre.

Science FictionThriller
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Atmosphere cover

Atmosphere

TJ Taylor Jenkins Reid
2025 · 352p

For when you want the awe without the survival horror.

Joan Goodwin has wanted to go to space her whole life, and in 1983, she gets her chance. Taylor Jenkins Reid's first science fiction novel is quieter than everything else on this list, a character study set against NASA's shuttle program. But the wonder is the same: the smallness of humans against something vast, and the stubborn, almost absurd determination to go anyway. A good palate cleanser between series, or a reason to stay up just as late.

Literary Fiction
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More to explore

These books share something with Dungeon Crawler Carl that’s hard to name exactly. It’s the feeling that the world has rules, the protagonist is learning them faster than you are, and the story trusts you to keep up. If one of these lands, your taste profile on Siftivo will pick up the signal. The more you read, the sharper the picks get. Find your next one at siftivo.com.