The plotline pioneered by Vivian Vande Velde in the early 1990s – of people being pulled into a real-life videogame either virtually or in the flesh – has definitely taken Japan by storm, and Yuu Kamiya's original novel for No Game, No Life is just the latest to arrive in English. Unlike it's predecessors Log Horizon and Sword Art Online, Kamiya's story doesn't actually involve a specific game that the protagonists are playing: older brother Sora and younger sister Shiro are insatiable gamers, making up for feelings of abandonment with high levels of video game achievement. The sole remaining god of the world Disboard is looking for someone just like them, and when Shiro beats him at a game of chess, the god (named Tet) pulls them through the computer screen and into his world.

Kamiya has done a good job of creating believable backstory for both the siblings and Disboard, and in many ways this is what holds the book together. Disboard has only one god left out of its initial pantheon because of a series of seemingly endless wars, during which all of the other gods killed each other off. Tet, the god of play, is the only one who didn't take part in the battles, and in order to ensure that there will be no replay of the war, he changed the laws of Disboard so that all fighting must be done via game: the winner of the game is the winner of the fight in a legally and divinely binding way. The problem for humans is that they alone cannot use or perceive magic, allowing other races (such as elves and werebeasts) to cheat undetected. Tet needs some people who cannot be beaten in order to balance the races out again, and Sora and Shiro seem to fit the bill.

One of the chief difficulties of the story is that neither sibling is all that likable. Kamiya does make us understand why that would be – several times he mentions that they have been abandoned by their parents and three-quarters of the way through the book we realize that they've essentially been on their own since Sora was the age Shiro is now (11). Thus they have no role models or other instructions in how to interact socially with others except the Internet, and we can guess how well that would go. Nevertheless, both are abrasive personalities in different ways, utterly codependent upon each other (which feels very much on purpose) and unable to really form any kind of healthy relationship with the residents of Disboard. This is seen most clearly in their interactions with Stephanie Dola, the princess of Immanity, whom Sora beats in a game. Her penalty is that she must fall in love with him, which she does as soon as he beats her. Arguably Sora's treatment of Stephanie is the biggest sticking point in the novel. Stephanie knows that the only reason she has feelings for the otherworlder is because he forced her to through the laws governing Disboard. She loves him against her will, and she's waging a constant war with herself as she remembers that, unable to tell what her real emotions are and what she is being manipulated into feeling. Sora (and Shiro) take advantage of this, particularly in the physical arena, and Steph's conflict both keeps us from really getting to know her as more than a conveniently placed character for the duo to meet and from becoming a rounded player in her own right.

No Game, No Life is unusual in light novels in that it is both written and illustrated by the same person. Yuu Kamiya began as a mangaka but switched to illustration due to his health, and this novel marks his transition into writing prose rather than panels. We do see a bit more of a connection between illustrations and text than we normally do, and Kamiya certainly does take some pro-fanservice risks, such as a color illustration of Shiro that is very nearly full-frontal nudity. (Were she older, this might be less surprising.) The major problem is that Kamiya's writing is "stylized", in this case meaning he uses a large amount of sentence fragments, so that. Reading the book. Sometimes feels like. This. Your level of tolerance might be higher than mine, but for me it is a major annoyance that detracted from the enjoyability (and readability) of the novel.

No Game, No Life certainly isn't going to be for everyone, but it can be clever and its world-building is interesting and tends to be well-thought out and not overstated. Sora and Shiro's relationship may make some readers uncomfortable (or annoy incest romance purists), and there are some real issues with some plot points, but if you're looking for a different take on the “locked in a game” story, this is a good book to check out.

Editor's note: this review originally blamed the 'sentence fragment' issue on the English translation. This was incorrect.