The phenomenal Russian bestseller. A vampire novel set in a richly realized post-Soviet Moscow, The Night Watch has sold across Europe and to 20th Century Fox for huge advances. In The Night Watch , the first of a quartet, and reminiscent of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials in its ambitions and achievement, the setting is contemporary Moscow. A small number of Muscovites with supernatural powers - those who are Other, owing allegiance either to the Dark or the Light - co-exist in an uneasy truce, each side keeping ...
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The phenomenal Russian bestseller. A vampire novel set in a richly realized post-Soviet Moscow, The Night Watch has sold across Europe and to 20th Century Fox for huge advances. In The Night Watch , the first of a quartet, and reminiscent of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials in its ambitions and achievement, the setting is contemporary Moscow. A small number of Muscovites with supernatural powers - those who are Other, owing allegiance either to the Dark or the Light - co-exist in an uneasy truce, each side keeping a close eye on the other's activities around the city. Anton, an Other on the side of the Light, is a night-watchman, patrolling the streets and Metro of the city as he protects ordinary people from the vampires of the Dark. On his rounds, Anton comes across a young woman, Svetlana, whom he realizes is under a curse that threatens the entire city, and a boy, Igor, a young Other, as yet unaware of his own enormous power. Partnered by Olga, an Other who is in the form of an owl, he struggles to remove the curse and thereby save the city, while at the same time prevent Igor from falling into the clutches of the Dark. The Night Watch explores the nature of good and evil and the tensions between the individual and the collective in a gripping narrative that owes as much to The Master and Margarita as it is does to the richly realized worlds of Philip Pullman and Tolkien.
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On its own, this was a great read. It has what I assume to be a healthy dose of Russian cynicism, and it is excellent if you want to be challenged by a novel that refuses to easily distinguish right from wrong. (spoiler alert) However, one of the strongest plot threads from the movie, about how Anton is tied to his son, is entirely missing from this novel, which I rather missed because it adds a layer of meaning to the movies that is then missing from the novel. There is no real equivalent plot device in the novel to make it as intense. Nonetheless, as a fan of the movie, the book is a must have.
