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(2.90/5)It's fast-paced, to the point, but also pretty hollow. I enjoyed reading it well-enough - the stakes are suitably high, and the scenario is pretty intrinsically exciting. But it has a lot of problems.
Starting with something obvious: The whole setting and scenario is nonsense. I'm sure the author is aware of this because there's zero effort put into making it believable that hundreds of young women and girls can get churned up by these death games happening on a weekly basis and no one notices, or that the organisation has a bunch of weirdly convenient technology.
But whatever - it's one of those everyone-has-unique-hair type stories, so we're probably not meant to think about it too hard. It feels very aimed at teenage boys honestly - and it feels like it goes out of its way to not make things too real. The convenient technology is an anti-gore treatment which basically means no one bleeds or splatters too graphically, and if they survive they can be fully pieced back together regardless of how serious their injuries are. While there is some disemboweling and general mutilation, it's always glided over without too much detail. It basically removes the horror aspect from the death game genre.
It's also a bit like both the author and the evil organisation sat down and thought "wouldn't it be sweet if we got to watch girls die?". There's a weird misogynistic undercurrent in the whole thing that's completely unexamined in the text, and a few physical descriptions of one of the girls were pretty off. I dunno - not looking to condemn anyone here, but I found it a bit uncomfortable.
But, I think my biggest complaint is that it's nihilistic. Normally with a death game type story there's at least some kind of theme, or examination of something. It's an easy type of story to examine ideas as big as capitalism or totalitarianism, or personal like the value of friendship or morality. This book examines nothing. People just kill each other, and it means nothing. It's straight-up death as entertainment for both the faceless bad guys and the reader.
It is entertaining though. As a light read, with tense situations and exciting twists - it works fine. Don't let me put you off it if a bit of vapid violence-as-entertainment is what you're after.
Difficulty-wise, I thought it was quite easy. There isn't really any specialised vocabulary.
constant high tension!
the author does a good job of constantly keeping you surprised, whether it's by revealing information that wasn't clear before or tiny twists that build up to a bigger plot twist.
the main character's thoughts are also touched upon such as what mindsets a player such as yuuki has to be able to play these death games repeatedly without losing their mind, and how her thoughts influence her actions (and how they don't)
would recommend as a first LN for anyone, very good at keeping you hooked throughout the book
apparantly no JSLs like this book since every single review i've seen of this book by a JSL calls it generic and boring, but at the end the author himself writes that due to the nature of the setting of this story that it isn't for everyone so i guess if you want to see reviews of people that are the target audience for this book go read reviews for vol2 and beyond