In the year 125 of the Singularity Age the Nevermore Institute is a worldwide, and extra-planetary, network of agencies dedicated to the study and understanding of a series of strange events related to the decay of the laws of physics in the universe called the Dark Events.
Their special agents travel to where these cases occur in order to investigate them and try to prevent them from happening in the future. Mai, head of operations of the Special Investigation Division, with her partners Shin and Lizbeth, along with thousands of other agents, are in charge of carrying out these operations in cooperation with local forces.
The cases they investigate are classified as Enygma Files.
The Nevermore / Enigma Files is the light novel inspired police procedural drama set in the futuristic science fantasy setting. Unlike the light novels which it takes the inspiration from, in form and structure, the Nevermore novel is competently written as an English-language original novel, and not a translation. Awkward wording and strange translations are not a problem here.
This novel is also fully illustrated. No AI art here. All hand drawn, original art - the professional artist with years of experience not only wrote and fully illustrated the Nevermore / Enygma novel, something practically unseen among the western web novels.
There is, however, a downside to all of this.
There aren’t any central characters to this story.
The titular Nevermore group is the (sort of) police organisation investigating the supernatural cases all around the world, and this novel is their story, however there is a little caveat to this: the story spans years, some cases even returning to the time before the organisation has been founded, each case with their own mysteries to solve and different investigators doing the job. There is a protagonist, but he, and his team, don’t even appear in all cases, and after a handful of episodes we have to get used to the entirely distinct set of characters than the previous one.
This is not necessarily an issue, however, one has to keep in mind that the story is rather an exploration of the unique science fantasy setting and its supernatural phenomena, and the world they created. Instead of the streamlined plot of the single novel, you would see rather a collection of the short-stories sharing the same universe, and most of its characters.
If this isn’t a problem for you and are interested in the world-building rather than the singular story, this novel is for you.
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