Read Vol. 1 - 9

Haruhi Suzumiya is a collection of Sci-fi, Comedy themed Light Novels (10 in fact) that fans of the popular anime series would read to get more depth to the story. So there’s really no need to go into detail of the story and overall premise of the Novels. As you may already know the story revolves around an omnipotent high school girl Haruhi Suzumiya, with powers (unknown to her) but told from the point of view of high school boy Kyon (real name unknown).

The anime series only scratches the surface, as it only tells one of the 4 known main stories “Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”. The other 3 being: “Disappearance…”, “Intrigues…”, and “Dissociation…”. Whereas the 1st only focuses on introducing and revealing the main characters and concepts of the story, the other stories tend to go all out in bringing forth complex stories involving time-travel, dimensional rifts and other sci-fi concepts. To help supplement these stories the remaining Light Novels contain episodic mini-events that only loosely follow the main stories. The main problem is the jumbled up nature of these stories and it does require some thinking into knowing the order of events. At least the seasons make it easier to overcome this issue.

The characters are what make these Light Novels worth reading and each of the main characters seem to have purpose into making this an enjoyable read.
- Kyon the guy that the story follows and it’s his witty comments and cynical attitude that will make him an instant fave.
- Haruhi is an eccentric and emotionally unstable girl that causes many problems for Kyon and the rest of the world.
- Mikuru is a clumsy, well-endowed girl that is there for fanservice and a means of time travel.
- Yuki is a cute, emotionless alien whose there to rely on whenever something happens.
- Koizumi is an esper that doesn’t play much of an active role except when it comes to his long explanations and annoying Kyon.
The best thing is when you see how each of these characters subtly develops, after a while but still remain a bit of a mystery. What’s also interesting is how the side characters tend to play a major role in the story and at times even become the source of speculation (e.g. Tsuruya).

Overall this is a Light Novel that any of the thousands of die hard Haruhiist would enjoy. There’s enough content to keep anyone busy with for a while and for those who like to use that thing called a brain would definitely enjoy it, with all the complex mathematical, physics and sci-fi concept involved. There are quite a bit of dull moments to be found, with excessive explanations and it can be difficult to tell what’s being thought and what’s being said out loud however these issues don’t take away the overall feel of the story.

^_^