Friday 2 August 2013

The Night Watch (Watch #1) by Sergei Lukyanenko



Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are the Others. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy parallel world existing in parallel to our own, each Other owes allegiance either to the Dark or the Light. 

The "Night Watch," first book in the "Night Watch" trilogy, follows Anton, a young Other owing allegiance to the Light. As a Night Watch agent he must patrol the streets and metro of the city, protecting ordinary people from the vampires and magicians of the Dark. 

When he comes across Svetlana, a young woman under a powerful curse, and saves an unfledged Other, Egor, from vampires, he becomes involved in events that threaten the uneasy truce, and the whole city...

  • Genre: Urban fantasy, Horror, Magic
  • Age: adult
  • Source:borrowed translated paperback
  • Original title: Ночной дозор (Дозоры #1)
  • Read from March 02 to 03, 2013

FINAL RATING: ★★★/★★★★★ + DROPPED SERIES

“Why was is that the Light acted through lies, and the Darkness acted though the truth? Why was is that our truth proved powerless, but lies were effective? And why was the Darkness able to manage perfectly well with truth in order to do Evil?”


I have no idea what to say about this. I liked it and disliked it. Both, equally. I loved it because the idea is unique and there is a lot of thinking about consequences, life in general and lot more. But i felt that the story was poorly executed.

Anyway, the book is separated in three stories.

First one is about Svetlana and boy Egor. Svetlana is cursed by a black mage, and her curse may affect thousands of people, leading to their deaths which will probably end by earthquake, war, comet or anything on big scale; while Egor is the Other/Ini who needs to decide whether he is going to be in Night watch or Day watch. Either good or evil.

Second is about a rogue Light Other/Ini who is killing Dark Ini, and all of the blame is being placed on main character Anton.

Third is about Night Watch's party time and some thinking and such, with some kind of resolution in the end.

I guess my favorite stays the second one.

“Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right.
"The common good and the individual good rarely coincide..."
Sure, I know, it's true.
But some truths are probably worse than lies.”


THE BAD


♦ The problem is that every of these stories ends suddenly. Next one starts almost immediately, and you have to wait a lot until you find out what happened to other characters from the previous story. I found that quite irritating.

♦ Sometimes i had no idea what was going on. And there were a lot of stuff going on. I just don't know. And it really bothered the hell out of me. It was just poorly executed while it could have been good.

♦ Writing. I also found the writing...tricky...sometimes i just didn't understand what writer wanted to say, so i had to go few pages before and read it all again.

♦ Characters. Except for Anton, i thought all of the characters were seriously underdeveloped. Except maybe Olga, but still. Svetlana is especially underdeveloped. And she is supposed to be one of the main characters.

THE GOOD


♦ Stories were quite interesting. I liked them, especially the second one, it was amazing (if it hadn't ended suddenly like other three).

♦ Anton is cool character, i loved his thinking, i loved his voice.

♦ The world building is interesting. Even though it's about good side and bad side and so on, i just found it different.

♦ No matter how much confused i was, i never found it boring.

♦ The moral and philosophical value in the story.

CHARACTERS


Anton: is just awesome. I loved him, i enjoyed reading the book only because of him. He is also a programmer, and i love programmers <3 (being one myself). Anyway, he is also a magician, Night Watch and crazy as hell. I loved how he questioned everything eventually, his struggles and decisions. He is really analytical, he analyses everything before doing something that he would regret.

Svetlana: really felt underdeveloped. I felt like she was there only to be love interest, and i have no idea how the hell it happened. I mean, i get it that some time passed between the stories, but i just don't get their (Anton + Svetlana) relationship or their love. It didn't feel real. She just felt two dimensional and that's a big let down. She was also not interesting in any way at all.

Olga: I liked Olga, i loved her in just every sense. To bad that she was not meant to be Anton's lover or something, because i think they would have been perfect for each other. She is just so interesting.

Egor: i really liked. He is sympathetic type of character and i just liked him a lot. He is so cute <3 He is kind of like Anton, he thinks a lot about everything, he questions a lot about both sides and in the end he decides his fate.

♦♦ There are of course a lot more characters. Some were interesting, some were not, but i definitely liked the characters from the Day watch.

OVERALL :


I really have no idea what to think about this one. I liked it but i didn't. My final decision is to not continue this series, because i just lost interest in it.

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