This turned out to be not quite my jam, but I can definitely see it being someone else's. To me, the story was confusing; maybe I missed it somehow, but I didn't really get how this game world was able to cross over into the real world, or if the whole thing was happening in a game world. The game mechanics seemed to be made up as the story went along, with some plot holes and lots of convenient saves along the way. Still, I appreciated having a diverse cast in the story, and the friendship between Nilay and Chess was nice. The art was great, though the fight scenes were a little hard to follow at times. If you like monster trainer and card battle games (the part of this that isn't my jam), you'll likely enjoy this!

#TheMassivelyMultiplayerWorldofGhostsVolume1 #NetGalley

The ratio text image was so disproportional and a bit annoying, The art is very interesting and the plot was interesting and the action scenes were intense and so cool!!!

I had a hard time getting into it despite the fact that I was already gungho to read it because I follow this author on Twitter and I wanted to be able to support their works since they are inclusive P.O.C. manga for Americans. But the pacing feels wrong, it starts really fast without giving the readers time to understand the world and what is going on which I think is on par for an adventure manga but not for elementary readers. The text-to-image ratio is off for me, lots of text not enough empty space or drawn space and it feels like a wall of text which is not what you want in a manga that reluctant readers tend to get. I think the premise overall is super interesting and engaging but the actual story is not so much. I don't think I would purchase this for my library unless I had multiple students ask for the book.

Story: 2/5
Characters: 4/5
Worldbuilding: 2/5
Overall: 3/5
Thanks to NetGalley, Quarto Publishing Group, and Oscar Fong for sending me a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The opening art sequence was fantastic. The characters/monsters are super creative and fun. I also really liked how unique the plot was with him being able to create a almost real life avatar. Overall highly enjoyed and can’t wait to see more.