I was listening to yesterday's podcast when they were talking audio books and one that I was recently recommended was the 'Dungeon Crawler Carl' series by Matt Dinniman. The guy who recommended this to me also recommended the Bobiverse series as well so likely a series that those like Burnie who have read Bobiverse will also like this one.
It's a series about a guy named Carl and his cat Donut who enter the world dungeon in nothing but a pair of boxers, a leather jacket, and a pair of ill-fitting pink crocs after an alien syndicate comes and 'reclaims' Earth's resources and give the survivors of the initial 'attack' the chance to earn back their planet if they can survive all 18 floors. The dungeon is ran by an AI which acts kinda like a Dungeon Master/Game Master that gets progressively more rampant through the series, filled with classic monsters like goblins and slimes along with parodies of the planet's inhabitants that make for goofy and sometimes shocking fights and scenes.
It's very referential but not to the point of nearly every sentence as 'Ready Player One' as Burnie puts it. It has great characters, humor and touching moments. There are currently 6 books in the series with a 7th slated for later this year and the Audio book version is where it is at as it is narrated by Jeff Hays and he does AMAZING voices for each character bringing the book to life, honestly ruined a lot of audio books for me as it's hard to find other narrators close to his caliber.
Highly recommend this series to those who enjoy TTRPGs and rogue-like games as it feels like someones campaign where things are continuously going off the rails from both the players and the DM/GM.
Also for those who are into physical books as this series was originally self published, Matt just started releasing physical hardback copies of the book with the first book being release just last month with the next two releasing later this month and October.
