"No Game No Life" volume 8 by Kamiya Yuu. This volume completes the giant snakes and ladders game from the previous volume.
The first half of the book deals with a real time strategy game, with typical features such as fog of war and resource management. But consistent with other games in this novel series, this one is played on a much larger scale, reenacting the war histories from volume 6. Plus the added detail where loser dies. With this setup, is it possible for all players to survive? The final strategy wasn't quite what I expected.
The strategy game was just a single challenge among other challenges that appeared on the board. After completing that subgame, the rest of the book deals with how the larger board game ended. Kuuhaku won this game, as expected, but how this happened wasn't particularly clear to me. This is where things got really confusing, particularly due to the author's masterful technique in hiding clues in subtle details. One such detail was actually on the cover of volume 7 in the lower left corner. Did Kamiya-sensei really planned all this? Or maybe he found an unexpected inconsistency that he exploited later? It's a greater meta mystery than the actual plot of this novel series.
I feel that volume 6 was a low point in the series, volume 7 was a vast improvement, and now volume 8 is the climax for the current arc. Some of the rhetoric were difficult to follow, but I have enjoyed all the games that the author has played on us so far. Looking forward to Ex Machina in the next volume.
Previous (2016-03-27): Nik Collection
Next (2016-04-13): "Imouto sae Ireba Ii" volume 4 by Hirasaka Yomi