LITOW definitely deserves it's rank, it's better than SGWM.
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The cringe part might be the romance near the end of the novel but that's it. It's not even cringe actually, some ppl just can't stand Romance.
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The MC is a bit of a hypocrite on a certain arc, but that also changes once some serious issues are resolved.
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Other than that, you should totally read LITOW.
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Btw, between the author's 3 novels, you could say that Gravis is the only true Main Character, it's literally like Klein in LOTM, they're from a different novel, still in the same world, but there's only 1 actual MC.