SAO volume 24 read:

It only takes a day to read a light novel.  This was an excellent novel, as expected of SAO, but it was too short to really say much.  The situation in Underworld is mysterious and confusing -- there wasn't enough time to explain.  There's an enormous monster attacking them in Unital Ring -- there wasn't enough time to describe the rest of the fight.  An evil witch has cast a curse on Kirito -- there wasn't enough time to explain how she gained such a mighty power or how it can be annulled.  Basically the book started all sorts of interesting storylines but hasn't followed through with any of them.

It certainly makes the next volumes of Unital Ring mighty appealing.  I need to know the answers to all sorts of questions.  Hopefully the rest of the series will be translated, and then eventually animated, so that my #3 ranking of SAO as an anime becomes justified.

In other news Uma Musume is getting a new 'streaming anime,' whatever that is.  Maybe that means it's lower budget than a tv anime?  But I was right to suspect this franchise wasn't done yet.  When something is this popular it rarely ends voluntarily.

In two weeks new Imouto Sae Ireba ii and No Game no Life books are slated for release, but these things tend to be delayed at the last moment so I'm not very confident in those dates.  At the end of the month we'll be getting a new Xanth book but these days they're not very good, so. . .  Basically May is a dead month with nothing to get excited about.  So far 2022 has had a good run of fun things to do every day, and starting this July things are going to pick up again, but the next two months are going to be tough.

It would help if visual novels were ever translated, but the fan community has basically fallen off a cliff.  No new Key visual novel translations in years, no new Da Capo, Majikoi A-5 still in limbo, Aiyoku no Eustia already a decade late. . . it's a huge disappointment.  If visual novels were translated in a timely fashion there would always be something fun to do.  At times like these their absence really stings.