I ended up buying this on an impulse after a friend of mine repeatedly nagged me (albeit good naturedly) to pick up this book. As anyone who has ever read a book based on a friend's recommendation goes, this can sometimes be unpredictable simply because everyone's tastes differ. I have to admit, I liked this book a lot more than I expected I would and I ended up finishing this within a day. It's not a perfect read, but it is a fun one. 
 The book's appeal will largely depend on how you, the reader, respond to video games. As the novel is set within a MMORPG, there is technical jargon liberally sprinkled throughout the book. There is a glossary for very new readers, but part of the fun of the book (at least for me) played heavily on my own experience with video games. It was almost like reading a novelization of a Let's Play to a certain degree, a comparison that's not exactly accurate but somewhat close. It's definitely in the vein of similarly themed works like Sword Art Online, .hack, and Log Horizon, however the difference here is that by large the people "trapped" in the video game are there by *choice*. This brought up an interesting plot point because I'm sure that every gamer knows *someone* that would willingly live in a video game if that were possible. 
 As stated above, this isn't a perfect book. There's some obvious wish fulfillment going on here since Max/Laith tends to have a lot go his way, but it's not to the point where it'd be overly obtrusive or ruin the book. It's pretty much done in a good natured way, playing on every gamer's fantasy about what it'd be like if they stumbled into the same scenario. 
 In the end I really think that only gamers will truly appreciate this book, although that's not entirely a guarantee - reading about someone playing a game isn't to everyone's tastes after all, which is why I've compared it somewhat to watching a Let's Play. Some of us will devour hours of LPs while others just scratch their head and shrug, not understanding the appeal. I have a feeling that this will be the same, although I don't think that disliking LPs would necessarily mean that you'd dislike this book.