“Everything is a game,” Melissa explained as she flipped her dagger through the air and caught it by the tip. “Most people just don’t realize that they’re playing.”
Riley’s real-life took a nosedive after her confrontation with Alex. The girls at school torment her and she feels powerless to do anything about it. At the same time, Jason has mysteriously disappeared, sending only a terse cryptic message to Riley and Frank.
With some time on her hands and with her frustration with her real-life reaching a breaking point, Riley decides to strike off on her own in-game. Her goal is to investigate the quest related to the strange bow she discovered in the dungeon north of Peccavi.
Yet events quickly spiral out of control as she discovers that the bow’s former owner has set her along a path of vengeance – with an entire city hanging in the balance.
So, this is our first side quest book in the series, but first I feel like I should make something clear, this is not an optional book in the series in my opinion. I know people might see side quest and think, oh this is just an extra novella set in the world and I don’t need to read it to follow along with the main story.
Now, this is technically true, but it would also be a big mistake to skip these sides quest books.
In this side quest we follow the pov of Riley who is one of the main characters of the series, but not THE main character. During this book we see her go out on her own without the other main characters in what would be the time in between books 2 & 3.
As you can imagine she goes on a quest, the name side quest fitting perfectly, and during this time we see her character go through a tremendous amount of growth. This growth is a huge change in how she interacts and carries herself in the real world and also her outlook in the game itself. Along with a lot of background about the character herself which we don’t get in the main series.
This is the reason that I think it is absolutely not an optional book. While you could skip it and just be like hmmm, I wonder why she’s acting differently and where did she get these new powers, you would be missing the journey of growth she went on and the reasons behind all of these changes.
So bottom line yes if you are reading the series you should definitely be reading the side quests and yes, I did very much enjoy the different perspective of this book since we see everything from a pov that we rarely look from in the main series.
The Shadow Library 