Sword Art Online Progressive 6 (light novel)

The second part of Floor 6 was finally finished in this volume and what a ride it's been.

This volume focus a lot of the quests and very advanced "NPCs" there was a lot of foreshadowing, not only for latter event in this same volume, but for events happening 2 to 4 years later in the main story, even in 2nd half of alicization.

This Volume was all from Kirito's PoV but damn it was an enjoyable and fun narrative overall.

Kirito's unspoken jokes, his nicknaming habits and even his dorky reactions are always fun to read.

There was several interesting plot going on at the same time with a good chunk of mystery, 2 big fight ( a group battle and a boss battle )

Definitely worth my time and money, 5/5 recommend for any fan of the old volumes.

I had been looking forward to the English language release of this book, which concludes a floor arc started in book 5 - however I was badly disappointed. The "Progressive" arc started out brilliantly in book 01 - that's the book that began life when Reki Kawahara was informed by the producers of the 2102 anime that they needed some additional story material to fill in the huge gap in the previous SOA saga between Kirito's very first day in SOA versus his joining the Moonlit Black Cats, many floors later. He came up with the story of how Kirito & Asuna first met; a very-well adapted & abridged version of this story is presented in "Beater" in the anime; however the original, longer "light novel" version he wrote is worth reading for its own sake. Kawahara says in an afterward that writing this longer story was the origin of the whole "progressive" version of the story, in which he plans to take Kirito & Asuna upward floor by floor, in great detail. In other words, same characters (with a similar relationship at the beginning), same world, but a different story in the details.

Not a bad idea - or so I thought when I started reading. And books 02 through 05 were definitely enjoyable, I found. However I did notice that both the writing & the English translation started to get a bit sloppier with each book. And alas, here in book 06, both the writing & translation have fallen down to an abysmal level. Book 06 totally fails to advance or deepen the developing relationship between Kirito and Asuna - if anything, they seem to regress in how they see each other - and not in a meaningful way. What we get in place of any meaningful character development is an action-only plot - and not only that, an unconvincing, sloppily written plot in which many of the key details simply do not seem credible. An example of this is the way Kirito manages to get his hands on (and then lose) the precious 'keys' that the Dark Elves are dedicated to collecting & keep safe - he doesn't even bother to first consult their trusted friend/companion, the elf warrior Kizmel. This made zero sense to me & I really began to lose heart as a reader - I did manage (despite the boredom) to make my way to the end of the book but there was nothing along the way to redeem the experience of having done so.

It's as if Kawahara at this stage wants to just crank out copy for the $$, without bothering about quality. I haven't even looked at his other, non-Aincrad light novels with their various story lines, as it seems pretty likely they are also just being cranked out. Sad, because when he takes his time, he can be an entertaining author.

When I think about it, though, his plan for the "progressive" arc to write an entire book for Kirito & Asuna's adventures in conquering each & every of Aincrad's 100 floors was probably bound to fall apart. That is just too much material for it to remain dramatically interesting - especially if (as seems to be the case) he can't be bothered to write more deeply & interestingly about the romantic involvement of the two lead characters. The original version of the SAO/Aincrad arc succeeded in part because it *wasn't* too long & therefore it was possible to show their involvement moving along in stages that were emotionally satisfying to viewers/readers. Dragging it out over 100 floors is just not going to work - alas. I will take a peek at 007 when it comes out in English just to see if he manages to recover from the disaster that is 006 - but I'm not hopeful.

I'm not saying it's bad by any means. This one just felt a little...drawn out. Personally in games, I don't care for tons of puzzles. A well places puzzle here and there, cool. But an entire floor where everything is a puzzle within a puzzle is just too much. The quest started in the last book continued into this one, taking the entirety of the book, which kind of bored me. It took a while to come back and finish it once I set it down the first time.

That being said, I did enjoy the elaboration on the quest, just probably would've preferred a more entertaining quest than Curse of Stanchion. I also enjoyed the thought behind it, of what if the quests would change and evolve depending on outside influences. That was neat, again just a better quest would have helped, in my own opinion.

Overall, still worth the read and I still love this series, I just got a little bored with the puzzles in this one. Next!

Im finding myself enthralled with the exponential growth of the npc characters on this floor. The relationships of Asuna and Kirito with thier AI friends has turned thier sidestory quest into the main event for the whole population of Aincrad. The leadership and insites of these two kids shine out brightly here. I noticed there was very little bickering from Linn and Kiba this time, maybe someone gotten over themselves? Time will tell. Great job Kawahara san, More! More!

One of my favorite parts about SAO is that it dabbles very subtly with some weighty topics of AI, individuality, death and reality. This book played well with the notion of “what is human” as it became harder to determine if the NPCs were truly just automatons following a script or maybe more “alive” in a very observation, personality sense.

First novel in the series was the best, each one since has been getting worse.
Basically no actual SAO content anymore. The game is no longer the enemy, this new forever 9 steps ahead PK army is everywhere.
Honestly wonder if it's the same author at this point. Its more girl hang out time then videogame anything.

What book comes next?
Seriously, because idk
There’s no saop 7, unless u count the comic
Tell me plis

Continues the adventures of Kirito and Asuna. If you enjoy SAO / the earlier volumes of SAO Progressive, you'll like this one too.