A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 1 (light novel) (A Certain Magical Index, 1)

Academy City is a city sized school that is years ahead of the rest of the world in terms of technology, and where the superhuman abilities are developed and studied. One of the cities students is Touma Kamijou, a student with terrible luck whose unusual ability, to negate the abilities of others, defies classification and therefore is considered powerless in a city of people with superpowers. On the first day of summer vacation Touma finds a young Nun on the balcony of his dorm room whose unfortunate situation draws Touma into a world of magic that defies science.'A Certain Magical Index' is the first Light Novel in a massively popular ongoing series that currently consists of more than twenty Light Novels, a couple of short story collections, manga and anime adaptions, and two spinoff/side story series ('A Certain Scientific Railgun' and 'A Certain Scientific Accelerator'). This first instalment of the series is quite rough in places with the setting not entirely fully formed as of yet but it is still very entertaining with some nice action and some good humour here and there throughout the novel.The writing of the novel is also somewhat rough with a habit of repeating the same phrases over and over again that I found slightly annoying. The characters on the other hand are generally quite well written and we do get a reasonably good handle on their personalities and motivations, even if a couple of them were probably a little underused. The illustrations in the novel a very good (the one of Kanzaki being my favourite) and the translation of the novel seems relatively decent, although it doesn't retain the original Japanese honorifics.The novel also includes a short afterword by the author.After reading this original Light Novel, the manga version and watched the anime adaption, I would have to say that I prefer the anime version as it feels a little more complete but as this Light Novel was still very entertaining and worth a good five stars in all.

I started this series with it's spin off "a certain scientific railgun" anime and manga so i decieded to read the original magical index books and i enjoyed it its more in depth and better than its anime counterpart . I still like the spin off railgun series more

originally written as a one shot which then subsequently grew into one of Dengeki's strongest long running series; spanned over 24 books in it's original run, sold over 4 million copies, won several awards for best characters and has been voted as one of the best light novels for several years. i originally read the comic adaption of the series and believed the series had potential to be something bigger and as such i gave the books a try and found that i was not disappointed and greatly enjoyed the style of writing that focused on the characters insight to the abstract elements Kazuma wrote with to show his dexterity and great understanding of his own seemingly believable world due to how well realised a magical world is.Kazuma Kamachi's a certain magical index is a story of two individuals of whom both live in completely different worlds, while concurrently living in the same dorm (as a freeloader of the sort), one from the magical side of the world and another from the science side.our hero goes by the name Touma; a righteous boy who has the power to negate any supernatural elements that comes into contact with his right hand, the other is called Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a girl who has been at the short end of the magic sides dark intentions for longer than she is allowed to remember.These two valuable assets of their respective sides end up going through multiple adventures as they deal with both the friction between the two worlds and from individuals similarly trying to find their place between the two sides. The first book in the series is tasked with selling allot of abstract yet interesting story elements by exploring all the magic and superpower stuff very slowly, as such all the magic and science isn't very prominent in this volume making the series more approachable than you'd initially think, with subsequent releases building upon the extremely well realised world using story relevant exposition.Magic is just science that we don't understand yet; Well that's nothing a good writer can't fix as Kamachi does a good job treating magic like it's a science(no one does that) and science like it's a magic (most sci-fi novels) which leaves a very fluid narrative where the abstract and down to earth elements mix together to create a rather digestible premise. My only gripe with Kamachi's writing is that sometimes it isn't very subtle (as with most light-novel literature) but after reading his work for a while i eventually came to the realisation that his writing style is pretty layered with the entire 24 volumes cleverly holding a secret under tone.

Good

Received the book promptly and in good condition. Just starting to get into it now, great premise and world but since i'm only 10 pages in i'm not really in a position to say more.