A book entirely from Asuna's point-of-view makes for a change from the previous books in the series, and finally fleshes her out as a character.

Given the story in this one, the stakes should be lower than previous entries, but they arent: they're just different. My only real issue with this book is that they introduce a character established as the greatest swordsman in VR, the most powerful player ever, eclipsing even Kirito... but then kill her off before the end of the story. And then they squeeze-in a bunch of mitigating circumstances to detract from the fact that she's clearly OP. Either commit to her being better than Kirito, or don't!

Was all set to give this book four stars, but then it made me cry -twice! - in the closing chapters so it earned that final star.