Looking at Ryll's post, it apparently wasn't. For some reason I was living under an impression the author was really young when he wrote this, though to be honest, I wasn't sure of the exact number, so 13 was a guess, more or less. But apparently he's fricking older than I am, which leaves me speechless. I used to write fiction as a hobby back in my earlier days (all the way up to high school), and although a publisher wanted to see the rest when I sent in the first part, it didn't get published and that was the end of it. But I assure you it was much more mature and better than SAO despite being written by a brat (not trying to claim it was objectively nearly good enough to be published, now judging it in hindsight)... But then again, we are talking about Japan, where this unique thing called a light novel exists and flourishes. I reckon one of its requirements is not to be too high literature.