In contrast to its English title, Nirvana in Fire is an icy beauty. The wintery vistas and washed out color palette mirror the cool, calculated strategies of its stoic protagonist. Despite an incredibly complex back story, the central arc of seeking redress for past wrongs is clear and compelling, and the 54 episodes fly by in a whirl of fight scenes, political gamesmanship and intriguing character interactions. Smartly written and well-acted, the show was a compelling introduction to mainland Chinese drama. The swift pacing does present some issues though. I know that adapting a well-loved, lengthy novel to the screen is challenging, but either pruning some of the more esoteric subplots or giving them additional screen time would have made the story easier to follow. It took a good 20 episodes to figure out the major character relationships, and some elements remained hazy up until the end. While I generally don’t advocate for extended flashbacks or childhood sequences, this is one case where showing rather than telling about past events would have been helpful. While I could intellectually understand the characters’ grief and their desire to right past wrongs, it was hard to emotionally engage with people and situations only encountered in the briefest of flashbacks. Like Mei Chang-su, the show is precise, intelligent and lovely. It’s also a bit cold. I would have liked more fire in the midst of all the snow.