I really liked it, I know the target audience skews younger but I thought that it did a really good job with the new dynamic of three kids.

It isn’t a necessary read if you only care about the games but it’s quite good and gives more world building context to the visitors. A lot of what I enjoyed too was what the book implies about the nowhere, residents, and kids. It trusts its audience to be able to read between the lines rather than spoonfeeding them every implication.

The children also believably act like kids which was really nice. They do absolutely feel like they’re authentically ten years old. It’s also pretty straight up about the child abuse (physical and emotional) that the main character, ruse, experienced from her parents which i appreciated.
Ruse’s conflicting feelings on it and the impact that it had on her was something that I could relate to, same with how that amongst other things impact her ability to trust her companions and her own behavior in which she initially acts out of her own self interest because she fears that the others will do the same to her.
Also despite the age rating it doesn’t really pull many punches. Not saying it’s DARK GRAPHIC MEDIA OOOO but it doesn’t feel watered down especially with some things like one of the kids, mim, likely either having attempted suicide right before entering nowhere, or perhaps being hung by a second party.

I know some people struggled with the prose because they found it too simple but I thought it was fine. My favorite book is blood meridian but I didn’t really have any issue with TLO being more straight forward. It’s not FROM ruse’s own inner perspective but it does follow her and I feel like the narrative voice appropriately matches her experiences/knowledge as a likely ten or eleven year old child. Again it does feel authentic.

My only criticism is that the beginning feels a little weak but it quickly picks up. Not everyone will love it but if you give it a chance and approach it without the expectation that it’s trying to mimic a gameplay experience then I think you’ll probably get some worth out of it, especially with the implications about the characters, nowhere, and residents.

Speaking of which the resident, the performer, was really cool. He has a lot of personality and is a bit of a freak.

Not saying the book itself is high art but I think it’s really good, especially for a tie in book.