Earmark
Sign in

Work · one recording

Dungeon Crawler Carl

Matt Dinniman · Dungeon Crawler Carl, book 1 · read by Jeff Hays

It tells a story. Hardcover files this book as fiction, and its readers there call it funny, lighthearted and adventurous. Facts, not factors: neither plays any part in our call.

Listen to it

Every book we have judged on how far the recording outruns the page: 201 of them, the page's answer at the left-hand end and the recording's at the right. Marked for scale: All the Light We Cannot See, To Kill a Mockingbird and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. This one sits in the top 1% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. −0.40, where we start backing the page; 0.40, where we start backing the recording.Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1)
emphatic · 3.32 clear of the line where this would stop being a listen

Audio has the easy job on this one: 175 readers call it fast, so nothing in it needs a page you can flick back through. Jeff Hays’ reading is well liked too (in the top 6% of our shelf of books, on 66,374 ratings of the narration).

Length does not decide this

13h 31m to listen, at 1×10h 49m to listen, at 1.25×9h 01m to listen, at 1.5×7h 43m to listen, at 1.75×6h 46m to listen, at 2×about 15 hours to readabout 11 hours to readabout 9 hours to readabout 7 hours to readabout 6 hours to read

The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 450 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 450 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 450 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 450 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 450 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.

Slot → chore-safe

Easier in audio than The Little Prince.

All the books we hold · 222

Easier to hear than 100% of the books we hold.

Fiction · 176

Easier to hear than 99% of the fiction we hold.

Long books · 56

Easier to hear than 98% of the long books we hold.

Reading load against listening load

Every book we hold placed by how much work it asks on the page, left to right, against how much it asks in your ears, bottom to top: 222 of them. Easy both ways is the bottom left corner, hard both ways the top right; above the dashed line the ears work harder, below it the page does. Marked for scale: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Diary of a Young Girl. This one is in the bottom 17% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the bottom 1% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears.
The dashed line is where a book would be same effort either way. This one sits below that line (the page asks more of you here than audio does), in the bottom 1% of our shelf of books for extra work in audio.
On the page−0.75
In your ears−1.91
Audio disadvantage−2.80

Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the bottom 17% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the bottom 1% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears. The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.

What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.

Every book we could measure both features on placed by pace, fast to slow, against how demanding the reviews we read found it, plain to demanding: 166 of them. The easiest listens are the bottom left corner and the hardest the top right, which is the shaded one. Marked for scale: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Diary of a Young Girl. This one reads faster than most books we hold and easier going than most, which is what leaves the format leaning towards the recording.
This one reads faster than most books we hold and easier going than most, which is what leaves the format leaning towards the recording.

How the call was made

Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.

The audio case
3.72It sits in the top 1% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. Past the line where we start backing the recording.
Narration payoff
0.92Jeff Hays’ reading is better received than the book it came from: in the top 6% of our shelf of books, on 66,374 ratings of the narration. This is a difference, not a score: it sets the reading against its own book, so a much-loved book with a merely good reading sits low on this shelf even where nobody disliked either. Asked the other way (how the reading stands against what the book’s own readers made of it, which is a different crowd rating a different thing), it comes out 0.19. We report that one and never score it: two crowds that do not overlap are held together by nothing but the standardising, which is a cost the figure above does not pay.
What is at stake
1.08It sits in the top 13% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: well enough regarded that a wasted first encounter costs more, so we lean towards protecting the page. Blended across 625,683 Goodreads ratings and 3,350 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.

For the page

  • The print crowds think highly of it

For the recording

  • The voice beats the book
  • An easy listen anyway
  • 66,374 listeners behind it

So the case for the recording won it clearly.

A bigger dot counted for more: the voice and the ear are sized by their share of the sum above, the other two by how much stands behind them. A hatched square is a reason that did not apply here, which is not the same as one that counted for little.

Evidence
1.00How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The reading66,374 people have rated this reading: as good as it getsThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 3,350 readers there: as good as it getsThe matchHow sure we are that the recording we scored is this book: as good as it getsThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it gets

What each crowd complains about

In the reviews we read, how often readers brought it up and how often listeners did, each against what is usual for that same crowd across our whole shelf, which is the grey tick. The track stops at 4×. Listeners are only ever compared with listeners.

Listeners of this book bring up the pace about 1.3 times as often as listeners usually do, while readers of it bring it up about as often as readers usually do.

What the two crowds said

Showing the stars as each shop prints them. The two crowds are not measured from the same place: on our shelf Audible’s listeners average 0.35 of a star above Goodreads’ readers, so a recording that is ordinary for Audible can still out-star a book that is genuinely well liked for Goodreads. Switch the toggle to take that difference off.Showing each figure as its distance from its own crowd’s middle on our shelf, in standard deviations, so 0 is a typical book for that crowd. Listeners start 0.35 of a star up, partly because anyone who finishes a twenty-five-hour recording chose it deliberately, and this takes that off. It is not a claim that audio is better, the story figure is still Audible’s own (people rating a story they heard), and none of it moves the verdict above.

4.84·Audible
overallAudible
overall, pooled by the shop, so we hold no ruler for it
89%5 stars: 89 per cent, 67,588 ratings
8%4 stars: 8 per cent, 6,190 ratings
2%3 stars: 2 per cent, 1,192 ratings
1%2 stars: 1 per cent, 476 ratings
1%1 stars: 1 per cent, 532 ratings

75,978 ratings · performance and story, as the shop pools them

4.92+1.30 sdAudible
the performanceAudible
the performance, against Audible’s own crowd
95%5 stars: 95 per cent, 63,022 ratings
4%4 stars: 4 per cent, 2,476 ratings
1%3 stars: 1 per cent, 482 ratings
0%2 stars: 0 per cent, 173 ratings
0%1 stars: 0 per cent, 264 ratings

How often this goes badly0.7% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars. Fewer than most recordings here. The middle of our shelf is 2.0%, and half of it falls between 1.0% and 3.1%.

437 of 66,417 listeners gave the performance one or two stars

The shape of the room

  • United, this one
  • Warm
  • Split
  • Lukewarm

A united room: 95% of the listeners gave the performance five stars. A room that agrees this far leaves little to gamble on.

66,417 ratings

4.80+1.06 sdAudible
the story, as heardAudible
the story, as heard, against Audible’s own crowd
86%5 stars: 86 per cent, 57,303 ratings
10%4 stars: 10 per cent, 6,621 ratings
2%3 stars: 2 per cent, 1,398 ratings
1%2 stars: 1 per cent, 461 ratings
1%1 stars: 1 per cent, 591 ratings

66,374 ratings

4.43+1.10 sdGoodreads
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
57%5 stars: 57 per cent, 355,479 ratings
32%4 stars: 32 per cent, 201,492 ratings
9%3 stars: 9 per cent, 54,276 ratings
2%2 stars: 2 per cent, 10,319 ratings
1%1 stars: 1 per cent, 4,117 ratings

625,683 ratings

The series

Dungeon Crawler Carl

No more announced yet · One voice throughout

8 books numbered on Goodreads’ list. Everything Goodreads lists is published, the last of it in 2026, and nothing new is announced, which is not the same thing as finished. We start saying finished after five quiet years.

Jeff Hays reads all of the 8 volumes Audible names in our records, with other voices joining on some of them — a cast, not a change of narrator.

From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 11 September 2026.

Every reading we hold

One complete reading of this book, and it is the reading every audio figure above is measured on. If there is another, we have not found it. The shelf grows in reviewed batches, never because somebody searched for a book.

  • Jeff Haysour pick13h 31m10h 49m9h 01m7h 43m6h 46m · One voice · Audible UK and US
    • The same voice all through

    Performance 4.92 · Story 4.80 · 66,374 rated the reading · 0.7% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars

    Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load

Jeff Hays’s reading is in our Hall of Fame, and the figures that earned it are all on that page.

The recording we mean

Runtime
13h 31m at 1×
Read by
Jeff Hays
Kind
One voice
ASIN
B08V87F4GS · Audible UK
Rated in
Audible UK and US · 6,417 + 60,000 ratings of the performance
Judged on
66,374 ratings of the narration
Published
Audible Studios · 2021

Audible sorts a search by newest, so ours may not be the first one you are offered. The runtime is the check: if the one in front of you says 13h 31m, that is the reading these numbers describe. “Judged on” is the crowd behind every judgement we make about this reading: the smaller of the performance and story counts, which is why it is a little under the two shop counts added. We do not link out to a shop, and we take nothing if you buy there.