Lord of Mysteries: The Clown Part 1 - Vol. 1

I feel like before I even get into my thoughts about this book, there's a ton of preamble that I need to start with.

First of all, I initially discovered this series through the donghua (Chinese anime) that is airing currently. At the time of this post, 8 episodes have released. The first season aims to adapt all of "The Clown", the 1st arc of the series, which has been released in 3 books. In total, the "Lord of Mysteries" is a completed series with a total of 18 books. 

I greatly enjoyed the donghua, which is what inspired me to start reading the series to begin with. I also knew that this was a highly recommended series among Chinese webnovel enthusiasts. I might have even seen a comment somewhere cheekily comparing it to One Piece in terms of world-building prowess.

Therefore, I certainly wasn't coming into this book blind, with zero expectations. I was already spoiled for some of the events of the book, and I was already interested in the series as a whole. This is all important to know, so you at least know what frame of mind I'm coming at this from. 

I think this is a situation where having all of this knowledge ahead of time is extremely helpful. While I am familiar with some slower paced light novels series (early Ascendance of a Bookworm being one of them), this is by far the slowest and most methodical series I've ever read in this sphere. 

The series is about a man named Zhou Mingrui. He's a developer(?) who runs into a spat of bad luck, which prompts him to try a ritual he discovered in an old Chinese ritual book. While the ritual seems unsuccessful, it transmigrates him in the middle of the night into the body of one dead Klein Moretti, who just recently committed suicide for unknown reasons. Trapped in this new world with only basic fragments of Klein's memories, Mingrui must navigate occult incidents and encounters with mysterious power-wielders called Beyonders in a steampunk Victorian-England inspired world. 

The first book is almost 600 pages, and the entirety of the novel is spent building up various aspects of the world. The currency system, the history, the magic 'system', how various organizations are founded and continue to run to this day, and even taxes are brought up. If this was your first exposure to this series, I would hardly blame anyone for thinking that this was a dry and boring introduction. 

However, all of it was extremely compelling. One of my favorite aspects of One Piece is how mysteries about the world are slowly revealed over time. This series is almost like that on steroids. It's entirely about the mysteries. The mystery of why the main character got isekai'd/transmigrated to this new world, the mystery of how the powers and magic system works, the mystery of why previous eras of history are completely unknown! There's so much to learn, and even the main character is yearning for this knowledge, in order to find a way back home. It's a simple premise with brilliant execution.

Another thing to note, is that the translation quality is much better in the physical release by Yen Press, than the digital version on Webnovel.com. Unfortunately, Webnovel is holding onto the digital publication rights, so there is not an ebook version. The physical book seems to have had an editing pass to ensure readability in English, as well as more "British" word usage. I did a comparison of the two, and found the Yen Press edition to be a much more comfortable and fluid reading experience. The prose is not amazing, but wasn't objectionable either. 

Since the Webnovel.com version does not currently use the updated text (that might change in the future), I definitely think the Yen Press physical is the way to go to consume this series. 

Although it was a long book, I was hooked from the beginning, and am dying for the next book in the series. The 2nd book is out in December, so it's going to be an eternity until I can find out what happens next!