The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

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Cover of The Story of the Stone

The Story of the Stone

core novel 1988 The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox

Record

First published1988
Original language EN
Work typenovel
Canon statuscore
Reader rating4.12 (3,048 ratings, collected 2026-08-26)
Page count289
First-edition ISBN9780553282788
Internal chronology2

Synopsis

In the second novel of the series, set in the Year of the Snake, 3339 (corresponding to AD 650), Master Li Kao and his companion Number Ten Ox are summoned by an abbot to investigate the murder of a monk and the theft of a manuscript from his monastery's library. What begins as a straightforward case of theft and murder grows more complicated once the pair's inquiries turn up connections to the Laughing Prince, a nobleman dead for roughly seven hundred and fifty years whose legacy still casts a shadow over the region. Their investigation, blending detective-style deduction with fantastical adventure, takes them across China, forces them to deal with a half-barbarian king, and eventually leads them toward the underworld itself as they try to work out what the stolen manuscript really means and why anyone would kill for it.

Where it sits

Notes

  • From the series record (The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox): A comic, mythic detective fantasy set in a China that never quite existed, following the elderly sage Master Li and his young assistant Number Ten Ox. The author stopped at three novels by choice, saying a fourth would only repeat what the first three had already done, and died in 2019 without writing more.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.

Sources

← The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox dossier · All universes

Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.