空の境界 下

空の境界 [Kara no Kyoukai] Light Novel #3

by Kinoko Nasu, 奈須 きのこ

両儀式とその友人・黒桐幹也の前に再来する殺人鬼。忌まわしい邂逅が、式を苛む“殺人衝動”を加速させていく。式と幹也の赴く果てに、真実を告げる記憶の“境界”は開かれるのか――!?　もはや伝説となった同人小説から出発し、“新伝綺”ムーブメントを打ち立てた歴史的傑作――。

Genres: Light Novel, Fantasy, Japanese Literature, Action, Drama, Dark, Urban Fantasy

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

奈須 きのこ, Nasu Kinoko, born 28 November 1973 is a Japanese author, best known for writing the light novel The Garden of Sinners and visual novels Tsukihime and Fate/stay night, and a co-founder of Type-Moon. Renowned for a unique style of storytelling and prose, Nasu is amongst the most prominent visual novelists in Japan. He graduated from Hosei University with a major in human science.

Reviews

[Kakuzō Akutagawa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kara no Kyoukai was surprisingly a fun read but I don’t think I liked it as much as I wanted to. The characters are quite remarkable, and the setting is, to put it frankly; quite great. But there are a lot of things that left me with a bad after-taste.

As I mentioned in my review of volume 1, the writing can feel very amateurish at times, with weird wording, and weird metaphors (I’m not going to expand on this, there’s a great review on Tsukikan that talks about some examples: ​https://www.tsukikan.com/misc/a-revie...). But I found myself not really minding it, rather than coming off as unprofessional or lacking in polish, I found it enduring and it was never a problem nor negatively impacted my reading experience. I'd say it was the complete opposite; the writing is great. The book reads great, the way things are worded is fun and impactful when they need to be. I still think that the start of the series was way too convoluted and hard to read when it had absolutely no need for it to be that way, but well, this is vol 2 so that weird change of narrators that I found so jarring and distracting on vol 1 was completely gone by the time I started this volume, or rather I had grown used to it. It has some difficult uses of kanji and Japanese that I did find difficult, but same as before, as I grew used to it it became a non-problem.

Kara no Kyoukai does feel amateurish writing-wise, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.
Now, my thoughts on the story:
Volume 2 covered the second half of chapter 5 and up to the last chapter (chapter 7). There is a third volume that includes future gospel and final record, but I won’t be considering those as part of the main series, as they were written many years after the original 2 volumes. (and I probably will be reading them some years down the line. After this book, I don’t feel like approaching Nasu for a while and I’ll explain why in a bit.)
Holy shit is chapter 5 amazing. It had absolutely everything I wanted from this book, cool characters, a cool mystery (? I dunno if I want to call it that), just some jaw-dropping action scenes, and it was so very enjoyable, I loved every single aspect of this chapter.

Then, there is chapter 6. Hey I quite liked it, it felt like a breather between chapter 5 and the last chapter, I interpreted it as “the calm before the storm,” it was so much fun to read, such a drastic change in setting after the madness of chapter 5 was more than welcomed, I loved seeing Azaka as a narrator and the story-line was just interesting enough to keep me invested. However, did it feel like Kara no Kyoukai? It’s hard to say.

After chapter 6 there’s a brief intermission, and woah, this hyped me up so much. It had me so excited for the last chapter, it introduced so many interesting things and to be honest, it reassured me; the ending is going to be amazing.

Then there was chapter 7 and the epilogue...

So those were my thoughts on kara no Kyoukai volume 2.

Ugh, jokes aside, I haven’t felt so let down by a piece of media in my entire life, AND I READ NISIOISIN’S NINGEN SERIES!!!!! Chapter 7 was so absolutely bad, it actually took me weeks to read through it whilst I had been invested in what came before it so much that I went through all chapters before it relatively quickly.
Chapter 7 was dumb, the resolution was horrible, it had a great set-up and to be frank, when starting it I thought it was going to reach the heights of chapter 5, but it fell flat so hard that I swear it made my entire opinion on the series turn quite sour.
I’m not the kind of person to mind if an ending is bad or good, the actual road to it is what entertains me the most (as it is what I’m going to be spending most of my reading time on), as long as the road there is good, I can put up with a bad ending no problem.
Imagine how let-down this ending made me feel that I’m talking about it in such a light. I disliked it so much that it makes me want to not approach Nasu for a bit.

Then the (quite short) epilogue came and I expected at least something to make up for how straight-up bad chapter 7 was, and when I thought it couldn’t go below rock bottom, it proved to me that anything can be achieved; it broke through rock-bottom and reached bedrock.

So, here’s my final opinion on the series overall:

Chapters 1-5 are quite a lot of fun, and an absolutely great read that is quite worth it.
Chapter 6 could’ve been a side story.
Chapter 7 could’ve been entirely omitted.
The epilogue was so bad it’s comical.

I love Nasu’s works, and damn, I talked about chapters 1-6 in such a good light that I’m surprised that the last chapter changed my opinion on the entire series so drastically.

I’m a database animal, I can’t go on without giving this a numerical score, Kara no Kyoukai, the garden of sinners by Nasu Kinoko is a 6.5/10.

To be honest, if the series just happened to be chapter 5 with chapter 6 as a spin-off I would’ve liked it quite a lot more.


Extra rambling:
Holy shit are the 20th anniversary editions insanely pretty. The paper quality is the best I’ve seen on a printed Japanese novel, the design is exquisite, and holy shit it’s the first time I stop and think; “damn, this is a nice font to read.”
My only problem is that below the dust cover it has a checkerboard pattern where it alternates between pretty small convex and concave squares. It looks so nice but it’s such a pain to actually read. The nature of the convex-concave squares tends to get insanely dirty, that’s the first time I’ve come across such a problem. And the hardcover being this weird kinda high-quality cardboard-ish material just made me actively worry about the way I held it, the way I stored it, and the way I approached cleaning it. The act of holding a book in one’s hands for hours on end is destined to make one’s hands sweat at least a little, and woah is the material of the cover horrible with sweat or wet things. I found the places where my hands rested becoming rough and losing its color, and before that happened the smallest drop of sweat made the cover permanently stained (meaning that wiping the book with a moist towel or something to clean that dirt that the convex-concave squares tend to attract a lot, was out of the question), so yeah it made me so irrationally mad, especially because of how pricey these 20th-anniversary hardcovers are (3k yen a book, so around 30 USD each).

Ramblings aside, they’re still the prettiest books I own.

[Lin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chyba najlepsza cześć ze wszystkich, dalej nie mogę przeboleć że już się skończyła... Super się ją czytało. 5 gwiazdek i koniec

"Nie mam ochoty nic robić, nie mam ochoty niczego jeść. Nie odniosłem najmniejszej rany, a rozsypuję się, żyję jak martwy"

[云 · Rating 5 out of 5]

有一瞬以為要羅茱，沒有真是太好了！
抽象、幻想又設計得理性（煞有其事？自圓其說），而核心詩性的。其實無言與忍不住笑「這轉折很方便啊」的地方不少，但過程算十分順暢——讀這套很像順著譬喻一路一同琢磨鑽研到牛角尖中，譬喻的「真」與奇詭彎繞本身便是樂趣所在，從曲折邏輯中抬起頭時發現迷宮上有天空也是。對我來說是甚至比小說脈絡內比喻的「實在」（劇情）還要更令人著迷之處（換言之電波一對到後情節呈現便能坦蕩一同順過了，雖然不是沒在看……XD
用很多形似而不同的特徵，刻意混淆並堆疊（/為了凸顯）出「本質」的故事。拆記憶/忘卻/自我相關連的段落很有意思。與呈現人異質、孤獨與渴求的諸多樣貌。
所以最終以究極戲劇浪漫後又歸於平淡作結，以基調來說，也是很圓滿適合的結局w

[Lycoris Radiatta · Rating 4 out of 5]

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-Si no puedo hacer que tú te marches -le dijo bajo la lluvia, observando los faros de un auto acercarse y atravesar el camino de piedra entre los jardines de bambú- entonces, me iré yo misma.
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[Hanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

lepsze niz poprzednie, latwiej ogarnac o co chodzi ale na minus watek o laskach zakochanych w braciach

[Mizuki · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last book of Kara no Kyokai is a satisfying read. But I admit the first story is a bit weak still the intensive second story makes up for this weakness.

The truth about the heroine and her forgotten past is finally revealed as the two main characters faced the manipulative Magician and a dangerous serial killer who wants the heroine for himself--with entirely twisted, dark reasons.

We can also find the conclusion for the main couple's unusual romance in this book. I like how the author presented the affection between the boy and the girl. I also like how the author managed to make this "I have feeling for you, but I can't stay with you" affection work without making too many cliches.

And don't let the romantic book cover fools you. Kara no Kyokai is a series populated by serial killers, psychopaths and dangerous psychics/magic users, and I'm not kidding about it. Still I must admit I might not be entirely correct about "this series is populated by serial killers" part, I guess the author just wanted to show us how easily ordinary people can cross the line and how easily life could be destroyed.

Again, I want to highlight how finely the author had presented and explained supernatural power and supernatural phenomena, magic and magic users (called Magicians in the book). It's also refreshing to see the struggle between the main characters and the 'bad' Magicians isn't being stereotyped into some Good v.s Evil cliches.

After reading this book, now I want to watch the anime as well!