While in the beginning it might seem like it, but it isn't a detective novel. It's an adventure novel.

Notice the genre? Horror & Mature. It's got heavy themes and is definitely not for people who prefer sunshine-and-rainbows novels.

I can assure you, there's no romance in this novel.

The vocabulary is extensive and you'll learn new words if you're like me.

An intelligent transmigrator, a former Chinese keyboard warrior. Has an interesting inner narrative. He adapts quickly to his new environment, but his environment also changes through the story, so he does, too. He tries to keep his conscience while playing safe, and the result is that he can't save everyone, but he tries, alright?

I'm not the best judge of character development, but over the span of many chapters, the MC isn't the only one who changes. You'll get to see how the characters change with new circumstances they face, and occasionally, their POVs as well. Their motives and personalities vary widely. Anyway, I think they were well done.

As fitting of a mystery/horror novel, the deeper, more concealed/horrory bits of the Beyonder world are revealed slowly. Stuff related to it is described in detail. Be patient, everything comes together eventually. The magic or powers or whatever you want to call it is arranged and acquired in an interesting way, definitely not your cookie-cutter magic system. The setting is a world which has steampunk-level tech, horrory magic powers, real deities, and hidden places affected by said magic powers. Everything is super in-depth, which some may judge as being unnecessary, but I thought it was pretty cool and honestly did not worsen my reading experience at all.

BIG PLOT TWISTS. Closely tied to the magic and worldbuilding. There's one plot twist later in the story I felt wasn't needed, but the rest were AWESOME. You never see them coming. The story is slow-paced and only gets faster in the last 400 or so chapters.

Opinion on the ending:

Ending was a little lacking, but I'm not giving up hope for extras yet

he wants to return to his old life and he tried

tl;dr- Mixed feelings, very slow pace because of good world building, good story, decent writing. Foreshadowing so far was minor, but good. Author has potential, seen in next volumes. Give it a read, just binge it.

Coming straight to the point, the past 200 chapters are... weird. It's definitely not a bad read! But,

It was really slow paced and "slice of life (sol) " like. I felt the writing could've been better.

Cons:

The author was very descriptive when a new character or an item was introduced- which is good, because of it you are experiencing it at that moment. Bad, because the information can be overwhelming at times. All this info dump, makes the first 200 chapters longer than it needed to be. I would say that there were about 30-40 of good action packed chapters which would keep you at the edge of your seat and make you guess. I had questions, which were kinda answered at the end of Vol 1 (<213 ch) but I still have questions which I imagine would be answered in the subsequent volumes.

Secondly, the action scenes could be better if author used atleast half as much as effort as they describe the "sol" scenes but that wasn't the case till now.

Till now, most of the troubles faced by MC was easily solved except for few instances. Reason being: MC is too careful, smart.

Lastly, the translation. The translation isn't bad itself but the choice of words was. Phases "heh-heh" was really used a lot admist sentences, a bit disappointingly if I may add. But, the meaning of stuff remained fair and sensible.

Pros:

Characters: Many characters, they seem close to 3D as they seem flawed because they make mistakes. MC is a bit smart, caring and I love his relationship with other characters.

Humor: This is what gave the novel +1 star because it carried the boring parts

World: Not much is known about the world till now, it is the end goal for now.

And to my favourites, Tarot Gathering, Job Requests, Different POVs- basically everything else other than the boring slow parts. I love it immensly.

Sure it's disappointing at times but it's a decent read. Don't burn yourself out, because the last 10 chapters of volume 1 makes me think that it is worth continuing this novel.

Now THIS is what I like.

All my previous points are still valid except for the cons I mentioned.

The pacing has improved, feels like a different novel overall.

Action scenes, they've gotten better. No/Less Slice of Life sequence, very less info dumps or rather it's written well integrated into the story.