I can only imagine this series’ popularity is mostly to do with booktok or something similar, because this book really doesn’t have anything special to offer.
Functionally and mechanically, it’s nothing more than a typical RPG isekai anime in book form, losing the visual spectacle they usually offer, and resulting in painfully slow pacing as the book tries to explain the game like the reader is new to RPGs and is expected to play it themself.
Tonally, it’s among the more confused books I’ve ever read; it reminds me of the “emotionally conflicted character driven adventure” that I was writing in highschool. The setting is persistently trying to paint an existencially nightmarish picture of the circumstances in the vein of similar game-show escape room stories like Running Man or Mazerunner. At the same time, the tone insists on trying to replicate the crass humor of Borderlands. While I think this dissonance could be pulled off well, it clashes horribly in this book, making the horror and distress feel shallow and insincere, and making the humor land about as well as that of Mindy Kaling’s Velma
For all the book’s faults, though, the casting and performance is phenomenal. The voices are distinct and phenomenally fit for their characters.