魔道祖師 1

This is a translation of a book originally written in Chinese. The English version is called “The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation” if you want to see lots of reviews focusing on the story aspect or look for content warnings. There’s also an animated version, and a live-action adaptation called “The Untamed.” The 4 volumes of this story are a single book, not a series. In countries with age guidelines, it’s rated for adults.

It’s a mystery in a fantasy setting with a slow-burn BL romance. Expect murder, battles, betrayal, ghosts, zombies, magical weapons, and gore. The last volume has spicy scenes.

I read the Japanese version of vol 1 after already having read it in English and watched the drama, but I missed a lot in that first reading (and the drama adaptation is pretty different) so reading it again in Japanese is helping me fill in details that I didn’t notice before. IMO this is not an easy book, but the story is harder than the language. There’s a large cast of characters and some of them have 3 names. The plot jumps backwards and forwards in time repeatedly, and sometimes there are backstory infodumps, or a story as seen through the perspective of a different character.

These books are longer and denser than the page number suggests. They’re trade paperback size and use a magazine-style layout with two blocks of text in a small-ish font. There’s almost no white space, and no illustrations. The page count is 379 pages, but I’d guess the content is equivalent to maybe 550~600 pages in a normal A6 paperback. It’s been a little frustrating feeling like I’m reading a lot and working hard, while the page count barely moves because there’s so much more text on each page than other books.

A character list with furigana appears at the beginning, arranged by clan. Characters have a brief description, and their 字、名、and 号 if applicable. 字 and 名 have katakana for the Chinese pronunciations (and their furigana appears every time through the whole book), but the 号 are Japanese-style. There’s another page for 用語, with a few terms describing the basics of cultivation clans and the naming system. However, it’s only a very quick and basic gloss — the vast majority of jargon words aren’t listed on the 用語 page and the reader has to learn and keep track of them while reading.

The writing/translation style is direct and action-oriented rather than flowery. There are N1 grammar expressions but no dialect or elaborately formal speech so far. If you have the kanji background to read other fantasy books in the mid-30s level range, the kanji in this shouldn’t be a particular issue. The vocabulary and jargon is the most difficult aspect, imo. The prologue is harder to read than the main story, so if you want to check a sample to judge difficulty level I recommend looking at Chapter 1 instead.

The amount of fantasy and universe-specific jargon is no joke. Reviews by Japanese readers include complaints that all the specialty jargon made it hard to read. I usually write made-up words on a paper vocabulary list for quick reference, and this book’s jargon list exploded quickly. Words which are easy to figure out in context (like 邪霊, which isn’t in Japanese dictionaries, although this doesn’t mean people on the internet don’t use it) are left for the reader to figure out. Others, like 奪舎 and 献舎 (possessing a body, offering a host body) are given furigana and in-line definitions as they appear in the story.

JP wikipedia for names + terms: https://wikiwiki.jp/mdzs/