Review: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa
Series: Haruhi Suzumiya #1
Genre: Light Novel | Fantasy
Length: 202 pages
Published on 1st April 2009 by Little Brown Books for Young Readers
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | TBD | Waterstones | WHSmith
Nagaru Tanigawa: Goodreads
Copy borrowed from Jenny during the Travelling Book Project I hosted.

Synopsis:
Haruhi holds the fate of the universe in her hands . . . lucky for you she doesn’t know it!Meet Haruhi – a cute, determined girl, starting high school in a city where nothing exciting happens and absolutely no one understands her.Meet Kyon - the sarcastic guy who sits behind Haruhi in homeroom and the only boy Haruhi has ever opened up to. His fate is now tied to hers.

Meet the S.O.S. Brigade – an after-school club organized by Haruhi with a mission to seek out the extraordinary. Oh, and their second mission? Keeping Haruhi happy . . . because even though she doesn’t know it, Haruhi has the power to destroy the universe. Seriously.

The phenomenon that took Japan by storm – with more than 4.5 million copies sold – is now available in the first-ever English edition.

Its been a little while since I read this book for my travelling book project so I’ll try and keep this straight to the point.

The story of Haruhi Suzumiya is an odd one and definitely covers a lot and has a lot of potential – some of which it reaches. But overall it left me feeling a bit too weird and creeped out to fully enjoy the story it told so it ended up being just an okay book.

The main fault it had, for me anyway, was that it was really pervy and sexual assault-y in super odd places but tried passing it off just a joke or the usual happenings in a Japanese school. So I mean added to that these characters are underage too just gives another layer of weird.

Here are some of the things I recall being put off by:
– strong focus on the female characters breasts by Kyon
– Haruhi groping and using another female characters body to “get things done” without consent
– Haruhi continually pushing said female character to wear lewd outfits to “get things done” or to just be the maid during the school club
– Kyon saving said images of female character as a maid for possible later enjoyment (without her consent/knowledge)
– Kyon recognising Haruhi’s predatory behaviour to other said female character but doing nothing to stop it

I’m sure there were probably others but these are ones that have stuck with me all these months later.

So lets pretend none of that gross stuff happened and put me off enjoying the book yeah? Lets talk about the things I did actually like.

Haruhi is weird, she’s different, and she 100% believes in the extraordinary – aliens, mind readers, and the likes.

Once she creates the S.O.S club and things get going I was really hooked because it soon becomes apparent that not only is Haruhi correct to believe in such things, everyone in her club (minus Kyon) is extraordinary. Haruhi doesn’t actually find out that these extraordinary people exist so close to her because they’re all there to monitor her as it turns out Haruhi is the most extraordinary of them all.

She is literally the creator of their world. So its there’s and Kyon’s (new) job to keep Haruhi to make sure she doesn’t actually destroy the current world and everyone in it.

Its a very interesting way of writing a world because it really makes some interesting imagery and scenes.

But also because of the whole concept of “Haruhi created this world” it allows the reader to ask a lot of questions – which as this is the first in a series might not always be answered.

Anyway I think that pretty much covers my thoughts on this book, heres a photo that Jenny took when it arrived back to her.