Brave Story...To Read or Not to Read?

This is the product description from Amazon:

Wataru Mitani's life is a mess. His father has abandoned him, and his mother has been hospitalized after a suicide attempt. Desperately he searches for some way to change his life--a way to alter his fate. To achieve his goal, he must navigate the magical world of Vision, a land filled with creatures both fierce and friendly. And to complicate matters, he must outwit a merciless rival from the real world. Wataru's ultimate destination is the Tower of Destiny, where a goddess of fate awaits. Only when he has finished his journey and collected five elusive gemstones will he possess the Demon's Bane--the key that will unlock the future. Charity, bravery, faith, grace and the power of darkness and light: these are the provinces of each gemstone. Brought together, they have the immeasurable power to bring Wataru's family back together again.

About the Author (Wikipedia):

Born in Tokyo in 1960, Miyuki Miyabe is a popular contemporary Japanese author active in a number of genres including science fiction, mystery, historical fiction, social commentary, and juvenile fiction. Her most famous novel in the English-speaking world is All She Was Worth, translated by Alfred Birnbaum and published in 1999. Amongst anime fans, her most famous novel Brave Story is the most famous, as it has notably been adapted into an animated film, an alternate retelling manga series, and a series of video games.

A prolific writer, Miyabe has published dozens of novels since her first in 1987. Her writing has recieved many major literary awards in Japan.

Glowing Praise from an Amazon Reviewer:

In this book, there are both fantastical elements and real-world elements.... The first couple hundred pages of this weighty tome (the book itself is over 800 pages long) are set in the real world and deal primarily with Wataru's domestic crises as his family begins to fall apart. The first chunk of the book does have strong, very important fantasy themes, but these are used largely for the benefit of telling Wataru's domestic story.

Once Wataru does enter and remain int he fantasy world, his real-world problems continue to plague him. The fantasy world, Vision, resembles the real world in many important respects.

In the beginning of the book, the fantasy world bleeds into the real world. Int he rest of the book, the real world bleeds into the fantasy world.

I'm sure I'm making the book sound too dry. For most of the book, I was on the edge of my seat, racing through pages, seeing and experiencing the adventures Wataru faces. My heart was racing as Wataru barely servived his encounters with demons, magical statures, and the worshippers of the old God. This book is, for the large part, a truly fast read, and often it is quite gripping. I finished this 800-page behemoth in the course of a week.

I've heard people compare this book to ... the Harry Potter series. While there are numerous similarities, Brave Story is a far darker novel. I probably wouldn't have liked this book as much had it not been for some very dark, scary moments. I like those moments - they make the book seem more real and relevant. Much of the book isn't disturbing at all, but some of it really is. This is something to keep in mind.

I loved this book - sometimes dark, it was always complex and gripping and had great characters and a wonderful fantasy world. A true must-read.

The Most Negative Review on Amazon:

I grabbed this book on the shelf based on the reviews here, and was really disappointed. For the first 200 pages, it's really interesting, although very dark for younger readers. .... Around page 200, howeve,r he crosses over into this new world on a quest-- and this is where the book completely lost me. The new world looks, sounds, and appears to be entirely based on RPGs (role-playing games); the author tries to finesse this by arguing that, since the fantasy world is based on Wataru, and WAtaru likes RPGs, it's okay that this world is so derivative. No one who has ever played an RPG/ D&D (Dungeons and Dragons), or even read much fantasy will be surprised by anythign that happens from here on out, however; this reminded me a lot of the slew of terrible books that came out in the wake of D&D in the 80s where people appeared to be writing quest novels by rolling die and reporting back the results. Wataru himself also becomes fairly inconsistent, since the author needs him to act older than his age for the story to work. Worst of all, the author doesn't return to real-world Japan except for a few pages at the end, leaving very unresolved all the set-up that came before. This felt like a good YA book about divorce squashed up against a derivative RPG quest; that the latter was 500 pages long was, I thought, just depressing.