As the title says, this is a side story in a long running series that I haven’t read a word of. I don’t have any attachments or baggage with the main narrative, so that is my caveat for this review.
The highs:
I liked that this bucked some of the tropes of LitRPG (which I have read a god amount of). The MC is not a hyper-competent savant male orphan age 18-22. He was not killed and stranded in a different plane of existence. He had different values than the young edgelord with psuedo liberal values that is the MC or almost every other book in the genre. He isn’t a bigot or anything like that, but he is an older guy that has experienced life in highs and lows and it informs his character. Would I want every MC to be a boomer age tech nerd, no. It is nice to mix it up.
The lows:
There were some really inconsistent things. His grown daughter acts like a teen. She pushes him to do things and complains he should do something and turns around and says “told-you-so” and demands an apology when the ideas go poorly.
The tournament makes little to no sense in structure and we have no idea the scale. How many students are participating? We get numbers thrown around that indicate it is in the 100s potentially, but we don’t know. The school is painted as exclusive and not excelling in the most basic classes means you are killed and tossed in the desert, but there seems to be a infinite supply of participants and sidekicks to not only participate, but station roving gangs of non-repeating mooks that jump people in between matches.
All that is to say, I enjoyed it, but it is far from consistent in the details. There was some intrigue that I am interested in seeing where it goes, so I am continuing for now, but hopefully the next entry clarifies some things so they are more coherent.