DNF at 50%.

The best way I can describe the book is: imagine the Hunger Games but with only District 1 - 3, the districts that prepare their kids to be victors. Now imagine all of the adults of these potential future victors are dumb as fuck and so are their kids.

There is some very dark backstory for some of the victors, but in context of the object of the game (sorry, champions at a tournament), the decisions of the adults make no sense. For example,

Spoiler

one of the parents prepared their family's future champion by chaining him to a bed and telling him monster stories until he soiled himself... at four years old. And then did this repeatedly through more and more terrifying situations as the kid got older.

In what way does that actually prepare a kid to murder six other people some day, rather than have a nervous breakdown? Or the fact that multiple champions perform experiments on themselves, wasting the magic that we're alternatively told is precious but also appears to be everywhere, with no real thought to what condition that will leave them in to fight in, oh, 24 hours.

All of the champions (you know, the four we care about, because the other three may as well be an amorphous blob for all the characterization they get) have these sort of weird decisions being made by themselves and their families, and it doesn't make me pity them. It makes me think they're idiots who are going to die immediately.

Except spoiler that I'm not going to tag: they don't! The game, sorry tournament, begins and the champions run into each other and do ... nada. Say threatening things to each other, offer to heal each other, and go their separate ways. And I'm not tagging that because people should know that, despite the marketing, this is not truly a death game story.

For a book that beats you over the head about how ~villanous~ they are, the actual tournament itself sucks all the tension out of it because it turns out they're not actually willing to be villains.