Sword Art Online Progressive 4 - light novel

In this book, we explore the ruins of the fifth floor. This brings in treasure hunting, ghosts, and a bit of a gray area as to where the "safe zones" begin and end. The first half of the story is told in third person following/from Asuna's point of view, which is nice because it shows more of her own feelings (and less of the 'Asuna is a total you-know-what feeling we got in the last few books). It switches back to first person Kirito's in time for the boss battle, which is the first well fleshed out boss battle since the second floor. Very cool. We also see Argo in a combat sequence, which is awesome, and even get some little insider info on the two main front running guilds.

It's hard to rate this one as four stars as I loved books 2 & 3. I was hopeful upon seeing the cover with the hopes that this one would go deeper into the character of Argo, but I still feel like her best showing was in book 1. I do understand that other parts of the story had to progress, but the main difference between this one and 2 & 3 was the absence of possibly my favorite SAO: Kizmel. The loss of her presence and uniqueness was definitely felt (at least by me) in this book. Still, it was an excellent addition to the series overall, and it was interesting to get more details on the growth of the Laughing Coffin guild (which is the main storyline this time instead of being a side story in the previous ones).

Love the story as always. Helps me unwind after a long day at work. Its a fun read if you just want to have fun this is the place to come. Kawahara is the first Japanese author I have read and it is very enjoyable. I have read many different authors including GRRM and Jim Butcher and love them but sometimes I feel like something different and this hits the mark. Looking forward to the next chapter and wish they would speed up the translation process. Maybe I should learn Japanese.

I've worked out in my mind the difference between the three series story lines going on right now. The most interesting point to me is the occasional hints that this is a memore written long after the facts with asuna looking over Kirito"s shoulder as he writes the text from mostly his point of view. I feel the manga series is mostly from asuna"s point of view,telling parts of the story that Kirito had mostly tried to forget!

I really like the progressive line. I'm not speaking ill of the main line, but I really like the extra attention to the growing relationship between Kirito and Asuna, and I also am enjoying the palatable menace of the growing evil in some of the players. So much of the first story was so rushed trying to fit it into one relatively short book.

While I also enjoy the primary series what I enjoy most about the Progressive series is watching the characters grow. We saw how it started and how Aincrad ended, but this is the juicy middle that shaped Asuna, Kirito, and the others for better or worse. Not sure how long Kawahara can keep up the pace, but I want to read it every step of the way.

I absolutely love these books! I finish them in 1 or 2 days I can't put them down! Would and do recommend these to everyone! I love that they go through each floor and I hope that it continues to do so!

More good times Kirito, Asuna, and their heartwarming friendship. Kirito's endearingly dorky sense of humor really came through in this volume, too.

This volume is really good I like the way they discribes the fifth floor as a lost city and how kirito beats the ALS team to the boss and gets the last attack bonus and you also get to hear to voices of laughing coffin for the first time!Nice work Reki

Having read these in quick succession, this one took me the longest, over the span of a few weeks due to university work, but was by far the most heart-racing and emotion inducing book of the 4 volumes thus far. Tl:dr, ekip to last paragraph.If you are like me at all and enjoyed Asuna's perspective from the earlier volumes, the first half provides exactly that in a very refreshing manner. It shared the less familiar thoughts of Asuna which have developed far beyond the thoughts of the Asuna we learned about from volume one, and are now much more aware of other players as well as her own skills in this VRMMO environment. This was so interesting that I felt sad when I saw the remainder of the book being shown from Kirito's perspective and I checked if the latter chapters were still written in First-Person. I hope that despite the authors' note at the end about the difficulty of writing from a different perspective, we will still see many more chapters from Asuna's point of view.Following this, in the second half of the volume, where things are seen from Kirito's perspective once again. This is very heavy with conflict, teamwork and action which led to some of the pages essentially disappearing from view because the pace of the story felt like it had picked up and either my reading got faster or I simply forgot that I was even reading as the plot and the action or relationships transported my mind into their world and only followed the events rather than the text on pages.I can't wait to see what happens in the next volume as the ending provided a massive action packed as well as emotional cliffhanger. This could actually prove to be useful as a slower ending, such as volume 3's, often make me feel less interested in instantly reading the next volume. Instead, the cliffhanger here has the opposite effect, and has me looking forward to Volume 5 immensely and will more than likely result in an early preorder, which proves it was successful as a book in promoting the next in the series.

This was a gift, and they loved it, great quality.

very good

This edition was good, really enjoyed the character development.