The Special Investigations Unit is a covert organisation that no-one in the city knows about, dedicated to investigating bizarre occurrences beyond the comprehension of the living. The Chief Zhao Yunlan isn’t a simple guy either, being the inheritor of the Guardian Order, he has always been a righteous conformist, excelling between realms of the living and the dead. While investigating a school suicide case, Zhao is attracted to the calm and reserved Professor Shen Wei, but the Professor seems to be rather fickle towards him…
Had been in an extended reading rut when I finally decided to pick up Guardian by Priest. Now, although Priest is an extremely well known author under the Boys Love genre, it wasn’t the fameof this novel that inspired me to pick up Guardian; rather, it was the generally lacklustre drama (other than the amazing actors personifying the main characters) and its butchering of the storyline that egged me to pick up the novel to gain a better understanding of the plot and characters within.
And whilst I am extremely glad to have gained a better understanding of the story the novel was trying to portray, there were certain parts of the novel that unfortunately, fell flat for me. The novel begins with the ever-so-mysterious Special Investigations Unit (consisting of its captain, Zhao Yun Lan (our main lead) and various other team members such as a female snake demon (Zhu Hong), a female ghost (Wang Zheng), a cat demon (Da Qing), the Zombie King (Chu Shu Zhi), and a male human intern (Guo Chang Cheng)), which is responsible for investigating crimes involving supernatural elements. It is during one such investigation where our main lead meets our other main lead, Professor Shen Wei, who assists the Special Investigations Unit in their never-ending investigations. As with Priest’s other novels, the characterizations of our main leads, and the other members of the Special Investigations Unit are extremely well done; each and every character has a distinct personality / color, and one is unlikely to get confused despite the numerous characters introduced and developed. The romance is also extremely well done here (in fact, better than some of Priest’s other novels, where the romance can sometimes take a back seat where Priest’s focus is more on the conveying of a message), and, despite the rapid pace at which our leads fall in love, Priest manages to make the romance believable (thus allowing the readers to root for our main characters) through the backstories of our main characters.
What fell flat for me, truly, was how overly-complex the plot was, such that it bordered on confusing (and I had to take my time to read the novel a second time to truly figure out what was going on). The large elements of Chinese mythology involved also added to the difficulty as, unlike Tong Hua, the Chinese mythology elements contained in Guardian were not properly introduced and explained. Admittedly, I may not have the best command of Chinese (or an in-depth understanding of Chinese mythology), so these factors could have contributed to my struggle in trying to process the storyline / plot, but it definitely wasn’t a breezy / easy read for me.