Via Lactea Book Quality (To Rule in a Turbulent World)
What a great book mail week for me! I received the hardcover Heaven Official’s Blessing vol. 4 published by Seven Seas, To Rule in a Turbulent World vol. 1 published by Via Lactea, and Nanchan vol. 1, Coins of Destiny vol. 1, and Global Examination vol. 1 all published by Rosmei.
I decided to take this opportunity to review the quality of the physical volumes. I reviewed Heaven Official’s Blessing vol. 4 and the Rosmei titles earlier this week, so this review of To Rule in a Turbulent World vol. 1 is the third and final installment.
Via Lactea
It’s kind of fun and kind of confusing how each English-language publisher does things a little differently, isn’t it? Via Lactea is a Canadian publisher that does a couple of things unique to them right now: they often publish ebooks prior to releasing a physical book (and just as often with no official announcements), and they offer two different types of physical books: a publisher’s quality book and a lower-quality print-on-demand version.
I’ve bought the ebooks for To Rule in a Turbulent World published by Via Lactea before, but I recently purchased my first physical book from them when Yiggybean became a distributor in the U.S. Yiggybean offers Via Lactea publisher-quality books in the U.S. at a much lower shipping cost than ordering directly from Via Lactea and having it shipped from Canada, which had held me back before. The print-on-demand books are available from large sellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but since I often read ebooks and only buy physical volumes for the art and quality, so far I’ve skipped those.
Cover Design
I haven’t read the novel yet (I’m kind of a sucker for a finished story), but I did spend some time checking out the quality. Except for one notable issue, I loved it. The overall design work here is impeccable.
The cover design comes across as very formal, with Chinese characters artfully interspersed with the English title of the novel. In a delightful surprise, the cover opens outward into a beautiful spread of high-quality artwork by ((whooooo???)). The endpapers of rich turquoise flecked with gold give the entire book a luxurious feel.
Interior Design
The interior of the book is treated with a lot of attention, with beautiful details decorating the sides of the pages and the table of contents.
I also love that they opened with a poem in both the original Chinese and an English translation. Often times I see danmei books relegate the original Chinese characters to footnotes or descriptions without a visual; I love seeing more integration and celebration of the original language in the English translations just like this.
The only notable issue I had with this volume is that the pages appear very thin, and it’s easy to see the print on the other side of the page. This is unfortunate and distracting, even when appreciating the gorgeous visual details. It might distract when reading, and definitely makes it nigh impossible to take margin notes if you’re inclined to that sort of thing. I hope Via Lactea considers a thicker paper for future volumes.
Conclusion
This is one of the prettiest books in my danmei collection, and it makes me all the more eager to collect more titles printed by Via Lactea. I’m also really excited to read this story.
The third volume was recently released as an ebook and can be found through Smashwords, Kobo, as well as others (check out my guide for ebook access), and the preorder for the printed volume 3 of To Rule in a Turbulent World should go live today, May 23! If you want to order a copy for yourself, you can read more about how to buy Via Lactea titles around the world here.
