I won’t spoil too much, but the eponymous tournament is less plot and more framing device. The actual plot follows the trend of the previous four books, commenting on the standard superhero formula. However, this book faces it more directly than ever before, much to its benefit.
unrelated to the above, there’s a moment in the book where Gary meets his possible future self, an old man who had successfully taken over the world. in the foreword, phipps mentioned he’d been many thousand words into the draft for Kingdom of Supervillainy before deciding he just didn’t like it, and writing Tournament instead. I have to wonder whether the Gary in the prevented future of the flash forward was a glimpse of what Kingdom was shaping up to be?
at any rate, this was a great listen. I hadn’t personally been entirely thrilled with Science/ book 4, though that partially was due to the ending feeling like a Bad End (a la video games) in that there wasn’t a way to really continue, but was unsatisfying nonetheless. Tournament ends with a sequel hook, which I’m fine with and excited to follow up on — but said hook is also not necessary; HAD phipps chosen to end it here, I would have been satisfied with that.