Hey, kids! It’s Akatzen with another Book Report. I hope you didn’t miss me too much last week. With The Undergrounds rolling out the introductions, it would have been downright petty of me to insist on keeping my day reserved for Reports. Besides, I’m looking forward to more of The Undergrounds as much as you are. You are, right?

Anyway, in honor of the newest addition to Semantink, I thought I’d review one of my favorite modern horror fantasy novels. While it may not be all that scary, it sure is a lot of fun! The book I’d like to discuss is Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko.

No, it’s not based on the Rembrandt painting. A movie version of the book came out in 2004, directed by Timur Bekmambetov (director of Wanted and producer of 9). I do have to say, however, that you should read the book before you see the movie, because the two are barely similar and the book is better (And if you accidentally see Nightwatch starring Ewan McGregor, you’ll be even more confused, since that has nothing to do with the novel and is actually a remake of the Danish film Nattevagten). Published in Russia in 1998, the novel took the country by storm, elevating Lukyanenko to the same level of popularity as many other high fantasy authors (in fact, when the movie came out in Russia, it ended up grossing more than The Lord of the Rings).

The novel centers around two groups of supernatural humans (known as Others), who live among normal humans. The two groups are the Light Others and the Dark Others, and a long time ago they fought each other in a vicious war. The Light Others get their power from the positive emotions of people around them, while the Dark Others feed off of negative emotions. During the war, they realized that neither side could get the upper hand and the endgame would be annihilation of both the Light and the Dark, so the leaders of both sides established a Great Treaty, and also an Inquisition composed of Light and Dark Others to arbitrate. They also formed two Watches, the Night Watch and the Day Watch. The Night Watch is a group of Light Others who are in charge of policing Dark Others and making sure they abide by the Treaty, while the Day Watch is Dark Others policing the Light.
All types of magic and myth show up in these books: Magicians, Wizards and Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, etc. are all explained as Others who follow the Light or the Dark.

The reason Others can do extraordinary things is because of The Twilight (some translations call it The Gloom, which might be better, since it helps people avoid comparisons to certain crappy novels written for tweenage girls — and also adults with tweenage mentalities). The Twilight The Gloom is a world existing just underneath the regular world, colors and sound become less vivid, but emotions are heightened. A human becomes an Other when they enter The Gloom for the first time, and all Others can enter The Gloom at will, though at a price. While The Gloom allows Others to perform deeds which seem, to regular humans, miraculous, the price is that Others must give The Gloom their energy to perform these deeds. An Other who loses his energy inside The Gloom becomes absorbed into it, and lost forever.

The book’s protagonist is a Night Watch operative named Anton, a low-level Magician who finds himself caught up in high-level scheming. In addition to the urban horror-fantasy setting of the novel, what makes the book so interesting is the battle between Light and Dark and good and evil. Light Others tend towards the altruistic, acting for the good of the many, while Dark Others tend to act selfishly, acting for the good of themselves. What this book does amazingly well is show how blurry the lines between Light and Dark and good and evil really are.

The book is divided into three parts: Destiny, Among His Own Kind, and All For My Own Kind. Each part is a complete story in and of itself, and while each story feels like a separate entity from the other stories, by the end of the book you can see how they are actually all connected.
Readers familiar with Star Wars (the Force) and Harry Potter (magic) will see many recognizable elements, but their portrayal is a unique and refreshing change. In particular, I appreciated how the legends concerning monsters and magicians were explained to work in this world without completely changing their mythology (the way Meyer did in her books-which-shall-not-be-named).

The film version of Night Watch actually only covers (extremely loosely) the plot of Destiny, the first story of the novel. The movie’s sequel, Day Watch, covers a highly bastardized combination of Night Watch’s other two stories, which is a real shame, since the novel’s sequel (also called Day Watch) is a series of three stories writing from a Dark Other’s perspective.

There are actually four books in the series: Night Watch, Day Watch, Dusk Watch (released in America as Twilight Watch), and Final Watch. Each book provides an examination of good and evil from different perspectives, and as a morality tale the reader discovers how much of a Grey Area between the two sides really exists.

So give ‘em a read and make sure you come back Monday for another read of The Undergrounds.
Until next time.

Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_