An Endless Story (有终) by Xiao Xie Chun Feng (小谢春风)

[douqi]

It took me three tries to get into this crime thriller, mainly due to work stress, not helped by the fact that I was simultaneously following the serialisation of To Embers We Return (焚情, pinyin: fen qing) by Ning Yuan (宁远) (which is so much more my thing). It was... fine, I guess? Maybe because I wasn't in the right frame of mind to engage with it, but I found both the plot and the romance (especially the romance) rather unsatisfying.

An Endless Story (有终, pinyin: you zhong) (fun fact: An Endless Story was the publisher's chosen English title for the print edition of the novel, but the literal translation of the Chinese title means 'there is an ending') features the central pairing of police captain Shen Zhuoyan and her 'shijie', data analyst Huang Zhen — so-called because Huang Zhen was a couple of years ahead of Shen Zhuoyan at the police academy. Shen Zhuoyan is the reserved one with the androgynous-to-masc presentation; she can often be warm in manner to subordinates, witnesses, members of the public, etc, but that's quite a surface thing and she never shares anything deep with them. Huang Zhen is the fashionable, femme bombshell, but also more than capable of handling herself in a physical altercation. It's clear from the beginning of the novel that they both know each other well and have a fraught relationship. Over the course of the book, it's revealed that this is linked back to an incident which took place when they were teenagers, and left its mark on them. The incident, it turns out, is also linked to the series of crimes which they solve in the novel.

( Read more; major spoilers )

The novel has an interesting serialisation and publication history. It was initially serialised on the author's Weibo account (now deleted). Before the Weibo serialisation was complete, it was licensed for print publication, and the publisher promoted it quite heavily. The author then began to serialise it on JJWXC, and it now appears to be complete (even if it isn't marked 'complete'). I read the web version of the novel on JJWXC, and also read the print-only exclusive post-ending extra, which came as a little booklet with the mainland Chinese print edition of the novel.