more interesting than the mystery

The following text is a critic's comment on the back cover of the book I am reading with the title of "Clockwork Game: The Illustrious career of a chess-playing Automaton". Does the highlighted sentence mean:

1. The book tells the story the way that the readers get more interested in understanding how this clockwork machine worked than following the story of the book.

2. The author has written the book the way that people get more interested in figuring out the process of the creation of the book than the story of the book itself.

Context:

Clockwork Game is about a really good magic trick, built to amuse and confuse the public. Clockwork Game is itself a really good trick; one that makes finding out how it was done even more interesting than the mystery.