Review of “No Game No Life Volume 1” by Yuu Kamiya
Buy it here:
Check here for a Braille version: https://ko-fi.com/braille
To start off: this book is perverse. I’m not going to talk too much about that part. I’m not offended by a book being perverse, and this book doesn’t try to hide the fact that it is. If anime clichés like breast groping bother you, you probably won’t like this book.
Our two lead characters are Sora and Shiro. Sora is eighteen and his little sister, Shiro, is eleven. They live in a room pretty much doing nothing but playing games because they’re socially incompetent. They get the top scores in every game they play and form a two-in-one player that is known as “ “ (Blank).
Suddenly, they receive an e-mail challenging them to a game. Shiro almost isn’t interested because she’s never lost at chess and has already played it a ton, but something seems unique about this bot, so they give it a try. As it turns out, it’s not a computer but a God on the other side, and when they win they get pulled into another world called Disboard.
Disboard is a fantasy world where everything is decided by games. War and fighting aren’t allowed. Instead, the god has decided to set up Ten Covenants for people to follow. Anyone can challenge anyone else to a game. They agree on what their betting, which can be anything so long as both parties agree that it’s of equal value. The person challenged gets to pick the game, and anyone who agrees to and loses a game is forced to abide by the terms.
It also turns out that the human’s (Immanity’s) last stronghold, Elkia, is currently deciding the next monarch through matches. The siblings happen to see Sephanie Dola, the current princess, playing in a match against another girl to become queen. Sora and Shiro notice that the other girl is cheating, and Sora gives her a heads up before they go to a room in the inn.
Shortly after, Stephanie confronts them because she lost the match and, if they had explained how the other player was cheating, she would have won. As it turns out, a player can cheat as long as they aren’t caught.
Sora insults and provokes Stephanie into a match and wins against her, commanding her to fall in love with him. Forced to abide by the rules, feelings of love are implanted in Stephanie that she desperately fights against.
From there Sora and Shiro decide to play to be the new ruler, which is about to end. They go to where the girl Stephanie faced off against, Chlammy, is about to be crowned and challenge her. They accuse her of cheating by using Elf magic – humans can’t use or detect magic at all, but her comrade nearby is an Elf cheating on her behalf. Using his phone, Sora gets her to believe that he has some sort of technology to detect magic so that she can’t cheat so blatantly.
Instead, as the challenged, she brings a game of chess for them to play. But it’s not normal chess – the pieces have will of their own.
Shiro plays at first, but she’s following the normal rules of chess and Chlammy’s pieces can break the rules. Shiro is still winning at first, but as Chlammy’s pieces can seemingly do whatever she slowly ends up outmatched. But, watching her play, Sora realizes how Chlammy is cheating.
He then takes over realizing it’s not chess, but a strategy game that looks like chess. Instead of bothering with following chess rules, he starts talking to the pieces, offering them rewards, building up morale, etc. Then it’s a back and forth between Chlammy and Sora until Sora finally wins.
In the end, after a few pages of Sora and Shiro fighting against each other for if Sora can be king, they both end up becoming the ruler.
As ruler, Sora begins using the encyclopedia knowledge he has on his phone to make changes to the kingdom. The god that first pulled them into the game comes and visits them, and Sora and Shiro determine that they’re going to overthrow God.
I read this shortly after Infinite Stratos. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of this book, I can say that I enjoyed it more than Infinite Stratos because it had an interesting premise, and when it got into the games I was interested to see what they would do to win. After Sora took over, it did become a bit of a jumbled mess (Sora was being written to be suave and persuasive, but I don’t think the writing adequately portrayed that). There was also coherent and unique story going on that the novel followed through on, whereas in Infinite Stratos it was more like, “The same stuff keeps happening, where is the plot?”
So I would say this book is more cohesive. The characters can also be told apart without dialogue tags.
That said, I think the writing is bad. I usually give a lot of leeway to writing in light novels because it’s a translation, and many things don’t translate very well. Sometimes awkward sentences can’t be avoided. However, this was far beyond that.
There were choppy sentences. A lot of sentences would suddenly cut off at the end, but. That’s not all… there was also… an overabundance of… ellipsis… everywhere. This is beyond massive over-usage of font attributes like italics and bold fonts, and sometimes both at once.
These all happened to the extent that it was distracting. Every page is like this. It was probably doubly bad for me because it was an absolute nightmare to transcribe.
I hope the writing is cleaned up in later volumes. I could see the characters being interesting. Stephanie Dola, in particular, I think has a good shot of becoming a strong character. She’s like the straight man of the group; the normal person watching all the chaos unfold. And we see that even though feelings have been implanted in her for Sora, she still has her own will and is quite frustrated with them. She’s also the one who really cares about her kingdom and saving it.
So, I would say there were parts of this book that I enjoyed, but there were a lot of downsides that made it drag, too. I don’t know if I’ll read the next one. I think I would need a break before I do, but some people may find this fun.
Next will be “Sasaki and Miyano Vol.1” by Shou Harusono. Buy it here:
Other reviews:
"The Second Jungle Book" https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/the-second-jungle-book-by-rudyard-kipling-1390007675730792452
"We" https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/we-by-evgenii-zamiatin-1390784329147224071
"Anthem" https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-anthem-by-ayn-rand-1395054370269171723
"Spice & Wolf Vol.2" https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-spice-wolf-volume-2-by-isuna-hasekura-1397584117876396040
"Spice & Wolf Vol.3" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-spice-wolf-volume-3-by-isuna-hasekura-1400209025269764103
"The Elements of Style" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-the-elements-of-style-by-william-strunk-jr-1400925092455649291
"The Great Gatsby" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-the-great-gatsby-by-f-scott-fitzgerald-1402686087800819722
"Heidi" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-heidi-by-johanna-spyri-1405629505891995656
"Glow Worm" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-glow-worm-by-harlan-ellison-1406700959396007949
"A Modest Proposal" and "The Lady, or the Tiger" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/a-modest-proposal-and-the-lady-or-the-tiger-1409272420245704713
"Final Fantasy VII: On the Way to a Smile" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-final-fantasy-vii-on-the-way-to-a-smile-by-kazushi-1411416995030634511
"My Next Life as a Villainess: Volume 1" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-my-next-life-as-a-villainess-all-routes-lead-to-do-1413664301960400904
"Infinite Stratos: Volume 1" - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-infinite-stratos-volume-1-by-izuru-yumizuru-1415427847245271060
“RAGS: Volumes 1-7” - https://www.minds.com/eisah/blog/review-of-rags-volumes-1-7-by-brian-ball-trent-luther-1417210371827044359