This book is the first volume published of the officially licensed English translation of the webnovel Guardian (Zhen Hun), previously published in Chinese on jjwxc under the pseudonym Priest. It follows the employees of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), a subdepartment of the police which is tasked with investigating crimes related to the supernatural.

The first character we are introduced to is Guō Chángchéng, a intern who comes to the SIU via his family connections and has no idea what he's in for. Guō Chángchéng is the kind of person with a good soul but the worst luck. You can't help but feel for him when reading his POV, as he has negative confidence in himself, something that seems to have been instilled in him by his family who see him as a bit of an inept loser. In reality, he is an incredibly kind who tries his best, but somehow manages to make a hash of most things he tries.

From Guō Chángchéng we are introduced to Zhào Yúnlán, the director of the SIU, who is presented as a laidback playboy with little patience for Guō Chángchéng's cowardice and fumbling. He is also incredibly clever and able to intuit the truth of things. He is skilled at his job but can take things too far out of impatience and judgmentalism. After he encounters Shěn Wēi during the first case in the novel, he develops a flirtatious interest in the mysterious professor. Fate keeps pushing them together time and again and the mystery surrounding their relationship deepens until the big reveal that

Shěn Wēi is the Soul-Executing Emissary, a powerful figure whose work intersects with the SIU

.

I came to this book having already seen about half of the TV show based on it, and I wonder if that's why I struggled with it. It felt incredibly slow paced and the writing style was pretty sparing in a way that made it feel a little dry, though as I am reading a translation that may not be the case in the original text. The book suffers from not being a complete work in itself, as it's only a section of a larger complete work, rather than being book one in a trilogy. This makes the pacing feel off and the end doesn't feel like a satisfying place to leave things. The book is mostly set up instead of having its own story to tell. There's also quite a bit of racism towards nomadic peoples which I don't care for, but this does seem to be a trend in Priest's work, having seen Word Of Honour (Shān Hé Lìng) which adapts her novel Faraway Wanderers (Tiān Yá Kè).

All that said, I am interested enough to read the next volume. The writing style grew on me over time as, despite the translation being more tell than show, Priest's mastery of subtle and unexpected humour still came through, especially with Guō Chángchéng. I am also interested enough in the relationship between Shěn Wēi and Zhào Yúnlán to want to see the payoff for all the hints laid throughout this book as to their pasts.