#but i was never as invested as he was in the guardians mythos i suppose

[covertblizzard]

okay was anybody going to tell me that for like 1/3-ish of the hard travelling heroes journey, they were accompanied by a guardian learning about earth, or was i supposed to find about that myself by reading it when lowkey trying to pressure the local library to renew it’s digital copy

bonus: hal hugging the guardian

spoilers: nothing changed because this guardian then got stripped of his immortality and banished by the other guardians and so the guardians continue to be assholes or whatever

[booksandwords]

镇魂 [Guardian] by priest

Read time: 4 Days Rating: 4.5/5

The quote: No wonder the old saying goes like this: For love, the living can die, and the dead can once again live. The living who feareth death, and the dead who cannot again live, art those who love enow not. — Shen Wei

My thanks to the translators and @dtriad for their translations masterlist.

TL:DR My concerns are largely my own. It's a complex story in the latter half that relies on time travel, reincarnation, mythos, romance and lies to fulfil its promise. The book is not the web series they share a name, character names and some plot points, their details are different. A big that you to the translators for all their hard work.

I’m going to be completely honest and say that while I enjoyed Guardian I really didn’t know what to make of it towards the end. It felt like Priest changed her pacing, realised that the end was nearing and had to find a way to wrap it all up. I have never read any sort of romantically inclined story that is as convoluted and complex as this in its last maybe 20%. It relies quite heavily on mythos, mystery and your investment in the characters to be understood.

Some of my issues may have come from the translation I was reading. At this point, the translator changed and she was using a more complex language, possibly using more Romanisation and keeping truer to terms used by Priest rather than simply anglicising. It was a bit to wrap my head around, who is that, where is that, and what does that mean? None were new in the source material but they were to me. In all fairness to the novel it likely would also make more sense if I was better versed in Chinese origin mythos, I know just enough to try and follow it.

Despite how it may appear I truly appreciated the ending though. It felt right. It felt like the build-up was leading to something big (even it did suffer from that pacing problem). I think I will need to reread this in a few months and see if I can follow it any better the next time around. I liked the characters. I came in with a favourite and that didn’t change. Da Qing is fantastically sassy, he is exactly what you expect when you think of a several thousand-year-old cat, who apparently looks like a black version of Garfield. The leading men are likeable and multifaceted, there is a mystery around both of them for the entire book, no one in play knows the whole truth about anyone. The bizarre little side plot between Chu and Gao is interesting for me and I really wish Priest had done a bit more with it. Unfortunately, the women are scarce and more than a little propey. The writing isn’t the best but I think it suffers taken out of its original language, I can see the loss of lyricism and tempo. Even without that there are some questionable moments that I won’t go into but let’s just say context and sense of self is a thing.

This is a BL in potentially it’s sweetest form while sexual contact is noted and Shen Wei and Zhou Yunlan are decidedly a couple, Priest doesn’t write it in detail (thankfully, sorry her writing style does not suit it). I did struggle with some of the writing. The terms “husband” and “wife” are used by ZYL, I think it is supposed to be indicative or cutsie but it feels off. Not just because of my idiot western brain, I think it might have to do with English’s clunkiness. I’m not convinced that those terms are a direct translation.

Finally a note on the drama. Calling the web series “Guardian” an adaptation of this work is disrespectful to them both. This is a BL with the cases the group solve intrinsically connected to the leading men, Sen Wei and Zhou Yunlan and their past. The web series is more of a police drama. The cases in the novel are used but the series has added many more (and a mini-boss if you will) to replace the WeiLan romance because censorship. It has used the same supporting characters but changed them substantially. Notably Lin Jing from a “fake monk” to a tech. Chi Shizui is drastically different from a “corpse king” to a physical fighter. Da Qing is still a cat but he spends most of his time in human form, which is a shame because his cat form is quite accurate. It exerts much more creativity than the standard adaptation. If you like the one you will likely enjoy the other, they are similar but not the same.

Because I haven’t finished the drama, I stopped reading while reading this, I’m halfway through, I still have one extra chapter left. Extra #4 the fix it Priest wrote for the drama(I do know some of what is coming. I see more tears and pain in my near future). The other extras do add something. They explain the ending, they make things more on and they don’t detract from the experience, unlike one book which shall remain nameless