Is Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation worth reading?
Is Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation worth reading if you've seen the drama? What readers say about the mystery, the flashbacks and the slow opening.
Most people asking whether Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (魔道祖师) is worth reading have already met it somewhere else: the drama, the donghua, a friend who won't stop. So, is Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation worth reading as a novel when you already know how it ends? Readers who came in that way mostly say yes, and then warn you about the opening.
What Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation is
Wei Wuxian, the most hated cultivator of his generation, has been dead for thirteen years when a forbidden ritual drags him back into the body of Mo Xuanyu, a disgraced young man who has traded his soul for revenge on his own family. Before Wei Wuxian can work out what he's been summoned to do, he runs into Lan Wangji of the Gusu Lan clan, the one person alive most likely to recognize him. The story moves between the present, where the two follow a trail of dismembered corpses across the clans, and the past, where a cocky disciple of the Jiang clan of Lotus Pier becomes the Yiling Patriarch. It's a xianxia murder mystery with a romance at the center, and funnier than its reputation.
What readers love
The structure comes up first. Readers say the flashbacks are the case itself: you work out who lied thirteen years ago at the same pace the characters do. Then Wei Wuxian himself, the rare lead who's charming on the page rather than described as charming. And the ending, which people who know the drama say lands harder in prose, because the book can be blunt about what the two men are to each other.
Is Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation worth reading for you?
The first volume divides people. It opens mid-mystery with a large cast of clan names, and a fair number of reviews call the opening confusing and heavy with exposition, especially where characters recount what everyone already knows. Readers who push past the first flashback almost always say it sorted itself out. The other split is tone: the book is a comedy for whole chapters and then abruptly isn't, and the swings jar some readers and delight others.
Under the mystery it's a book about reputation, about how a story told often enough replaces the thing that happened, which is why the flashbacks read as evidence rather than lore. If you only want the romance, the drama will serve you fine. If you want to know why a whole world agreed on a lie, read the novel.
Based on reader reviews; we'll write our own once we've finished it.
If you enjoy it, support the author where it's published: JJWXC. Licensed English edition: Seven Seas.
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