You’ve probably read a review beginning like this a 100 times before. And still I have to say it: I have never taken the time to review a single drama, because I’m lazy like that. But I think it’s time to do it for this masterpiece! And sorry for the length, I got carried away.

Yes, I have read the novel and yes, I surely do not like adaptations, as they never seem to be able to capture the essence of the canon story. So my hopes were low. If you add up the fact that this is a BL story and it had to be censored, to be able to see the light of the day in China, you would probably be less inclined to watch it. But, hear me out, this drama is worth every of the 2250 minutes of your life! They have captured the overall “look” and feel of the canon story in such a stunning way, that even if they would have discarded the canon story completely, this would have ended being a beautiful drama anyways.

Acting:
Starting from the cast, each one of them was beautiful and fit the characters they played. Most of the cast was young and yet they truly did a great job. I will be honest with you, most of Asian dramas don’t do it for me in the department of acting, as they tend to over-act, but this one was actually really good even for my picky nature. They clearly took the time to understand each character deeply and to portray them in such an accurate manner, that I didn’t know was possible. In certain aspects they even added depth to some characters that we haven’t experienced in the novel, which was heartwarming (such as Wen Qing, Jiang Yanli, Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian for example). Even the synchronization didn’t take away any quality, in fact it might have even given the whole drama more sense of uniformity. Oh, and they kept so many of the original dialogs and monologs, that I actually had the novel open to compare all the time!

Set, music etc.:
The landscapes, sets, lighting, compositions, costumes, makeup, sound and choreography were all so gorgeous and well thought through, that those alone are reasons the watch it. Whoever was responsible for the camera work I love you! The way they visualized the mystical aspects of the story were entertaining and appealing (I loved the black fog and the sound that the Stygian Tiger Seal made). The martial art styles fit each character well and yet appeared as though celestial beings were dancing (I’m looking at you Xiao Xingchen and Lan Wangji). And don’t let me start talking about the music. The music will haunt you in your dreams, especially Wuji (you will know what I mean when you see the ending).

Story – incl. comparison to canon:
Lets talk about the story. The novel on its own created such an amazing new fictional world with various types of characters, that it would have been difficult to create a bad adaptation, the film makers would have had to be very lazy to ruin this. So, no surprise here, that they managed to show this divine world and vibrant interactions between colorful characters. Still, I know many do not achieve this and therefore I really want to say thank you to everyone involved who made it possible.
Besides censoring the BL part, they have managed to keep almost every single other aspect of the story. Sometimes they went into such detail, that they caught me off guard and I only managed to close my mouth after several minutes. One could see and feel the love, friendship, family, hardship, envy, revenge, madness, intrigue, strength, political issues, betrayal, hurt, rage, stupidity… And in all honesty it was made in such a way, that even if you want our main heroes to fall in love, you can even see this part in the story. It is up to you, how you interpret their interactions. I know sometimes it sounds like a cheap excuse to says such things, but really it did not feel cheap here at all!
Of course there were other changes to the story (compared to other adaptations very few in my opinion), which were very understandable in fact. Listen, not everything written and seen in our imagination does work well in a live action. It can look weird or unnecessary prolong a story and bore the viewers. So, for example, the fact that they have not chased corpse body parts, but followed a sword spirit had little to no negative effect on the story really. Changing the last fight, actually made it more enjoyable, as the novel repeated some parts too often and was kind of dragging. Changing the temporal sequences was indeed necessary to keep new viewer interested and avoid confusion. Also adding some scenes that were not in the novel, only gave more depth to some characters and made everything more understandable and heart wrenching in the end. And last but not least, yes they cut the steamy parts, but hey we got the chickens! (Yeah my priorities are sometimes weird like that.)

Conclusion:
Looking from a general viewers perspective this was an amazing and entertaining drama.
Looking from a canon fan viewers perspective this was the best adaptation we could have hoped for (within the boundaries there are due to censorship and filmmaking abilities).

Rewatch Value:
I’m gonna start it today, so a big YES!

BTW if you watch the drama with subs, then you should definitely watch the ending on Tencent, as in the WeTV app they have changed a tiny aspect, which can make less of an impact on you (in my opinion).