Lord of Mysteries

Zhou Mingrui falls asleep in a contemporary Chinese university dorm and opens his eyes as Klein Moretti, an unemployed twenty-something in a Victorian-flavoured port city where steam locomotives run alongside extra-dimensional horrors and the official religions are organized cartels. The book on Klein's desk is a ritual manual. The ritual on the desk is half-cast. The series is Klein's careful navigation through the Beyonder system — a magical career ladder gated by digestion of supernatural compounds — while keeping his survival from being noticed by either the Churches, the secret police, or the older gods he is suddenly tangentially related to.