By Reki Kawahara and abec. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

I don’t think I’ve ever come across a book that more perfectly summarizes the best and the worst of Sword Art Online in one handy gulp. The high points of this book are excellent, and the low points are incredibly frustrating. Put together, though, we have a series that continues to intrigue even as the main cast that isn’t Kirito continues to be entirely absent – Asuna gets a few pages in the middle, but for the most part we are entirely in Kirito’s fantasy world here. Fortunately, the first half of the book or so gives another break from Kirito’s first person, as we get a long stretch narrated by Eugeo, who is nice and earnest and a good contrast to Kirito. I was expecting that we would see more training at the knight academy, probably ending up in the giant fighting tournament that had been lampshaded earlier. But then things went entirely off the rails.

Let’s get the bad out of the way first. We have yet ANOTHER instance where female characters are captured and threatened with rape, so that we may see how irredeemably evil the villains are (Kawahara’s villains remain his giant weak point – he can’t write nuance) and also justify Kirito’s violence towards them. This is even more annoying because we’d barely gotten to know Tiese and Ronie, so the threat doesn’t have as much of a reader impact as it did with Asuna and Shino, assuming the reader impact cannot just be narrowed down to “rolls eyes, sighs”. And then due to the plot moving on, we don’t see the girls after this, which just makes it more blatant it was done for pure “damsels in distress” reasons. I understand in the original webnovel this was taken from, the girls actually were raped – thank heavens for small favors that this was changed. SO BORED WITH RAPE THREATS, KAWAHARA.

Of course, disposing of the two villains does mean that the plot makes a right turn, as now Kirito and Eugeo are captured by the Synthesis Knights and brought to the Central Cathedral… which was their goal, to be fair, but probably not as prisoners to be judged. Things pick up a great deal here, as we find that Alice (remember Alice?) is one of the knights, but doesn’t seem to remember Eugeo at all. Kirito takes up the narration again here, and it works out well, showing off his smarts in knowing when to push hard on “this is a game world with game rules” – breaking the chains was particularly good. What’s more, after a long and highly interesting fight scene that shows us the knights may in fact be brainwashed, we are given a long, long infodump by a new character that actually feels realistic and welcome, telling us a lot more about the Underworld, how it got its start, and the evil woman now at the head of it all.

In the end, this is book 3 of a 10-book arc, so there’s a limit to how far it can take things. But once you get past Kawahara deciding that nothing adds to drama quite like rape threats, it’s enjoyable and fun, with excellent fight scenes. Just… get a new gimmick. I beg you.

By Reki Kawahara and abec. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

If the 7th Sword Art Online novels felt rushed because we weren’t used to the pace of a single volume story, then this book has the opposite issue. Alicization Running is filled with cool scenes, exposition, and character development, but it is the very definition of “Part 2 of 10” – it doesn’t stand on its own as a novel, really. For those who expected we’d see Kirito and Eugeo reuniting with Alice in this book, she’s barely even mentioned except as a goal, because to get to her they have to become Knights, which means winning a tournament, which means going through sword training school, which means winning ANOTHER tournament. Kawahara is stretching this out, for good or ill. Fortunately, it’s partly good – this is still readable, and by now I hope the average Sword Art Online reader takes Kirito’s success with a sword for granted and does not grind their teeth at it.

The other good news is that the first third or so of this book is devoted to Asuna in the real world, who is trying to figure out what happened to Kirito, who is not, as we may have expected, in a hospital but has instead completely vanished. We do eventually find out where he is, with a lot of seeming villains who are really helping out heroes and the like. We also get more of one of my least favorite things in Sword Art Online – praising Akihiko Kayaba, the villain of the first arc who condemned thousands to death, but is really just a misunderstood man with a dream, something that even Asuna says she can respect, which just makes me shake my head. Unfortunately, the rest of Asuna’s section is taken up with huge swaths of technobabble as Kikuoka explains what they’re trying to do here, why they’re trying to do it, and why Kirito is here. Some of those explanations are a bit disturbing – the author even has to remind us in the afterword that he does not necessarily agree with his characters (I’m guessing he’s meaning the use of DELICIOUS TASTY BABY SOULS).

Meanwhile, Kirito’s having an adventure, and while he does think of Asuna and the others, and misses them, his focus is on getting to the central capitol. This involves a lot of showing off, because this is Kirito after all, as well as forging him an amazing weapon that can be the equal of the sword Eugeo possesses (which is a black blade almost identical to his Aincrad one). He also gets to face off in a battle with the #1 swordsman at the school… who sadly is not the young woman on the cover. She’s the second strongest swordsman, and the plot is set up to build to a final battle against her that never happens. I’d like to say it’s not just because she’s a woman, but let’s be honest, it probably is. As always, Kirito is at his most interesting when he’s upset or something goes wrong, such as when his classmates’ petty bullying and destruction leads him to the literal power of prayer to fix things (fortunately, this is a gaming world, so it succeeds).

I wish we had more of Eugeo, who’s a nice sweet kid but not much else – he got far more development last time. As for the regulars who aren’t Kirito or Asuna, well, Leafa and Sinon get to have a confab with Asuna at the start of the book, but Lisbeth and Silica are reduced to begging on the back cover. Yui actually fares better than they do – her discussion of AIs, and how in the end she isn’t the amazingly self-aware fairy daughter she appears to be, is well-written and also chilling. This is a necessary volume of Sword Art Online if you want to read more of Alicization, but by itself it’s a bit frustrating. Recommended for fans of the series, but I’m hoping for a bit of a Turning point next time…

Also, Kirito spends most of the book being protected by invisible sentient head lice, who I can’t help but picture as Jiminy Cricket. I just want to throw that out there.

By Reki Kawahara and abec. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. This is it. This is the Big One. This volume of Sword Art Online begins the Alicization Arc, an arc that will not end until Vol. 18 rolls around in December 2019. And you can tell from the writing in many ways, as Kawahara is taking his time to set things up and carefully introduce things that will clearly have relevance later – not least of which is Alice herself, whose disappearance is one of the major plot points of the book, but it’s not resolved here. For those who love the main heroines of Sword Art Online, well, you may be in for some hard times. Asuna is here at the start, as well as Shino. We even hear about future plans, as Shino discusses the next Bullet of Bullets tournament and Asuna and Kirito make plans for going to college overseas. Unfortunately, life has other plans. Fortunately, we have a new heroine, in the best Sword Art Online tradition, to help Kirito with this crisis. He’s even on the cover. Wait, he?

Yes, that’s right, the author has finally realized that the occasional appearance by Klein isn’t cutting it, and gives Kirito someone who can be an equal as well as (sort of) a childhood friend. The conceit of this book is that Kirito is testing a new VR system that’s the most realistic one yet – unlike Aincrad and the other VMRROs we’ve seen to date, this new system is able to mimic things down to the last detail. It’s also, apparently, able to give you vivid backstory if need be – the first 60 or so pages of this book are Kirito, Eugeo and Alice as kids hanging around their medieval fantasy hometown and getting involved in things that they should not. Unfortunately, after an attack in the real world by an ex-member of Laughing Coffin (really, all of these guys basically got away scot-free, didn’t they?), Kirito now finds himself, grown up, in the same world, though he’s now himself and Eugeo doesn’t seem to know him. Now he has to a) find out where he is, b) find out how to return to Asuna, and c) join forces with Eugeo and rescue Alice, who was taken away years ago by Knights as a punishment for transgressing one of the many Laws..

The viewpoint here is, with the exception of the childhood prologue, 1st person Kirito as usual. I find it more tolerable than others do, I suspect, mostly as I think the best way to remind us that Kirito isn’t superhuman is by showing us his thoughts and fears. I also really like Eugeo, the new guy. He’s sort of bright, shiny and innocent, the kind of really good guy that the girls all think Kirito is but he’s never quite managed to pull off. He’s also surprisingly skilled with a sword, and Kirito wonders if more training might even make the two of them a close match. (I hope so. It’s always refreshing seeing Kirito not be the best at something.) When this book is telling Kirito’s story, it’s excellent. Unfortunately, there is one big weakness – Kawahara is fascinated by his invented technobabble (this is also an issue in his other series), and there is endless discussion of vitual reality and what life and a soul actually means. I’m sure it will be highly relevant later, but having it come out in the form of an infodump made things a bit tedious, which is a shame given it was our one big scene with Asuna and Shino.

In any case, though, overall this was a very good start to a very big arc, introducing a new (missing) heroine, giving Kirito a potential male best friend and partner, allowing Kawahara to try his hand at a “fantasy” setting with knights and goblins (who talk about sexually assaulting a young girl, something that apparently is so common in Japanese light novels with goblins that I’ve now run across it three times in less than a month), and setting things up for the next book. Will we be cutting back to the real world and Asuna at all, though? And will Liz and Silica ever get More Appearances? (The back cover of Book 10 may offer a clue there.) Let’s see if Alicization hits the ground running next time.