First, if you don’t know already, I would recommend not to look up the titular concept before reading. While I had heard of it before, I didn’t remember any details and enjoyed discovering it along with the characters.

While the first book relied on mystery for it’s cosmic horror elements, which are mostly dispelled by the end, this one takes a more logic-based approach. This has the advantage of not being easily deus-ex-machinable which enhances the effect. Although the immediate threat is averted by the end of the story, the concept itself remains untouched and the thought lingers. I don’t think I have ever read such a grim book before, I absolutely loved that aspect. Not quite sure why I enjoy these melancholy bits so much…

I liked the idea of wallfacers, although the idea that there would be just a single wallbreaker for each seems a bit weird with the exception of Keiko Yamasuki. After the introduction of wallfacers, Luo Ji’s indulgences were quite boring, but that part was nicely bridged by the other wallfacers and his story becomes more interesting again after his revelation on the lake.

The translation is decidedly worse than in the first book. While it uses the same style of colorful language and large vocabulary, this is in sharp contrast to the glaring errors that pop up as often as every few pages.

  • A rather important proper noun from the first book - “Red Coast” - is translated sometimes the same, but other times as “Red Shore”.
  • “Deathly” is often used in places where clearly “deadly” was meant
  • Numerous individual grammatical errors

I found these quite distracting while reading.