Is it fair to reject manuscript with few words of comments after long 9 months of review? In January 2016 I had submitted my work to Elsevier mathematics journal. For 8 months they kept my manuscript under review and for one month under status 'Decision in process'. Now the editor responded rejection with comments like following; "The manuscript is of limited interest to the readership of this journal, and I can not recommend it for publication".
Is this fair to respond with such short review after such a long period of review ?

I am not in anyway want to justify that my work can not be rejected, but after such long wait I was expecting some decent comments.
I can't say about fairness, since the manuscript might be indeed of limited interest. On the other hand, I would have contacted the editor after two months under review.
It's possible that the manuscript had been forgotten either by the reviewers or by the editor.
But what seems to be quite probable in this case is that the editor might have been searching for reviewers, but none showed interest or kept giving up in the process. That would explain why there was no reviews attached to the answer (which is usually the case when the editor decides without reviewers feedback).