Shinsekai yori

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I am surprised how few people have read Shinsekai Yori (and how there are 0 reviews) despite the fantastic anime adaptation having over 500,000 members. If your issue is that Shinsekai Yori does not have an official translation, don't worry! It was fan-translated by a person which has been cleaned and edited over the years, making it a great read with few grammatical errors.

The story makes you think about yourself and others' lives despite being set in a completely different time than ours, a millennium in the future. That doesn't mean this is a novel about ships whizzing through space, however. Instead, you might actually ... think it was set in the past. On the surface, it shows an incredible and unique story which you don't see very often but on the inside, it explores what humans truly are.

The novel has no art whatsoever other than the cover art because it's a novel, not a light novel. However, the way it was written gives a vibrant view of the world, full of descriptions of scenery, emotions and tone among others.

Moving on to the characters, they are fleshed out and full of characters which change over time. All of them end up in sticky situations which test their limits and how far they are able to go. They stick to their personalities throughout the book without making a sudden change which won't make sense.

Overall enjoyment? Amazing. The story is stunning with no clear area with who's right and who's wrong. Everything's grey, which makes it all the more enjoyable to read and analyse. Just like the anime, however, it starts rather slow, but it all adds up in the end for the grand climax.

If you have seen the anime and wish to enjoy it with a little more detail or re-experience it in another form, this book is a great for you, but don't read it if you wish to see any "hidden" plot points or anything—this book doesn't have that because the anime already adapts everything perfectly. On the rare off-chance you haven't watched the anime, then this is nonetheless a great read to get sucked into due to the very enjoyable story and intriguing plot. Just don't drop it early! It does start off slow.

Dystopia created not by tyrants, but as an attempt to keep the last remains of humanity from going extinct. The burden of greater power. Is greater good a reason to trample on personal freedom of individuals? How much can perceived evil or good change into good or evil depending on the point of view? What does it mean to be a human?

Shinsekai yori is a heavily philosophical work that ask those questions and more. Well, not asking directly of course, that would be too on the noose. It would be more accurate to say that the story makes you question these questions yourself.

With two ... volumes, the novel delivers more plot than some others struggle with volume count in dozens. There are no fillers, the storytelling gets to the point and there isn’t unnecessarily heavy infodumping, but an exploration of the workings of the world together with the protagonist.

Beyond the philosophical qualities, it is precisely the characters that are the strength of Shinsekai yori. The growth and more importantly, the depth, especially for the antagonists. Here comes in play the switching between/explaining clashing points of view that for the first time you experience the story makes for a great experience as the plot plays around with how you feel about certain characters before delivering its twists. Twists that you didn’t see coming, but makes sense in retrospective and enhance the story points – the best kind of twists.

That said, I imagine most of you have already seen the anime before even opening the database entry for the novel. What are the differences? None really story-wise, except perhaps for some scenes being described more explicitly, and that I felt the introduction to the story was handled better as it took shorter time to get the ball rolling. But while this won’t give you extra new content if you’re already familiar with the anime, it can still serve as a nice memory refresh if you’ve seen the anime a while ago and this way can deliver a nice reading experience too, as it would for someone experiencing the story for a first time.