Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

Hands down my favourite story (in any format) of 2023.

I am grateful to everyone on this site who has discussed the translation issues. I went into it fully warned, and I also believe that this edition would have greatly benefited from more proofreading/editing from the publisher.

If I go into the story itself, it is absolutely brilliant. I experienced it first with the live-action adaptation, and I'm now finally delving into the books... let's just say that this story both broke me and healed me at the same time. I currently don't have the words to express how much I love each and everyone of these characters, their arc, their development, how they get close to one another, and eventually how they learn to trust and open up. In both the adaptation and this book, emotional, impactful and even heartwrenching scenes are brilliantly intermingled with funny, goofy and cute moments. The story does us a good one: it gets us, the readers, to open up and trust these characters (as they do themselves as the story progresses), only to have our hearts broken if anything at all happens to them.

Why I love it so much, book 1 edition:
- We start off with a punch, a little bit lost in the setting and the numerous characters, but the pacing is solid enough to get us through the initial confusion.
- The characters: As we meet them at first, they are intriguing, we do get the sense that they all have a past and a history with one another. Especially at the beginning, this feeling is strong enough that I wanted to stick around to know more about them. But hear me out: the characters in this book/story are everything. The events themselves are impactful, but it's how the characters react and adapt that sticks. Their emotional journey is both heartbreaking and heartwarming, in the best possible way. When we meet Lan Wangji, we get the feeling that something terrible happened to him, and it MUST have something to do with Wei Wuxian. He tolerates every antics that wwx throws his way without faltering, so the real mystery here is to understand why. What did he have to go through to change this much? For Wei Wuxian, it's about understanding his past, and why he was so hated by everyone when he was alive thirteen years ago. And, more importantly, how did their relationship evolve through time? We'll get there, of course...... Our main cast of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian is wonderfully funny, awkward, cute, chaotic, but also deeply emotional and very comforting. Our secondary cast (looking at you Lan Xichen and Jiang Cheng) are slowly being introduced, and at this point I'm looking forward to getting to know their book version!
- Mandatory relationship gushing: The longing... oh the longing is intense and I'm here for every moment of it! Wangxian, simply put, warms my heart
- All the little hidden details. As a first read, but having seen the adaptation, I can already spot a few that have me in awe at the foreshadowing and the future developments I know are probably coming. At a reread it would most likely be even better.

I know I still have a lot to learn about the genre, the context and other strong works in this space, and I am very excited to continue this journey. MDZS is already very dear to me, and I can't wait to get more of it with the next books.