I'll admit that I was a little bored with the previous volume in the series. It was good but not great & felt just a little well, stale in comparison to how fun the first volume was. This is a big improvement although I have to say that I just didn't get into it as much as I wanted to.

This volume is comprised of several short stories, some of which I loved & some I didn't. I have to admit that I liked the time travel story as well as the one concerning the computer club president. Those really were great & I could see where either of those would have made for a great book all on their own. (Not to mention how cool the murder mystery story was.) The madcap pace of Haruhi works really, really well in short story format.

Unfortunately I just didn't thrill over this book, which I'm more chalking down to personal preference. (Plus there's a few bits of translation that just didn't make sense coming out of a Japanese teenager's mouth, such as the reference to Social Security, but I'm not going to hold that against the translator.)

This is still a great book & I really do recommend it heartily to any Haruhi Suzumiya fan.