The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko Search Amazon for other books by or about Sergei Lukyanenko. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

In a world of magic and vampires and all kinds of conspiracy and secrecy, good battles evil out of sight of the normal people. The Light Ones consider themselves good, protecting the people of the world and only sucking their psychic energy because they have to and it is all in a good cause anyway. The Dark Ones consider themselves free, they will husband the resources of humanity but only because of logic and, like all cattle, they are preyed upon when required by the higher need of the truly free spirit. Constant battling across the streets of Moscow has pitted the Light of the Night Watch against the Dark of the Day Watch. The conflict is mediated by a great Treaty that prevents things from getting out of hand and a police force, The Twilight Watch, which has real teeth. The forces of Zabulon, the leader of the Moscow Dark Ones, are arranged and deployed in strategies which they can scarcely discern and wonder whether they are really as free as they like to believe. This novel, as exciting and compelling as its predecessor, follows their travails.

This book follows the model of its predecessor The Night Watch by being divided into three separate acts or stories. The first concerns the young witch Alisa, who played an important role in the earlier work. The second moves on to a wholly new phenomenon which it would be spoiling the surprise to reveal here, while the third wraps up various different threads throughout the narrative to date, against a somewhat apocalyptic background. It is tempting to say that readers who enjoyed the first book will enjoy this second one too, since it maintains the same narrative pace and drive and there are sufficiently vividly drawn characters to keep the reader enthralled. The setting, which ranges from the streets of Moscow to the majesty of Prague, as well as a young pioneers camp in the Crimean, is one of the most important and successful aspects. Lukyanenko makes it clear that the Others of the watches are not just part of the milieu of Russia but are embedded in its culture and its history. Since the wizards, witches and werewolves can live extended periods of time, then they have a much richer appreciation of the sweep of history than most ordinary people who are obliged to focus most of their attention on struggling to survive in the post-Soviet world, unless they are part of the new IMF-approved kleptocracy that took over from the Communists. His regular inclusion of song lyrics, which are close to poetry but suffer from the translation, also speaks to the heart of the Russian soul which, as any lover of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, or Lermontov will know, is steeped in the poetic tradition that is tied irrevocably with spirituality and religion. I do not know any of the musicians he quotes but they seem to be genuine and really quite evocative of the new Russian society, with its endless temptations to nihilism.

It will be interesting to see whether Lukyanenko can maintain the pace in the third part of the trilogy--the angst-ridden voice of the Day Watch is repeated here to some extent and the plot twists and deeply-laid stratagems of the two great wizards, Gesar and Zabulon, are more interesting and given more space than interaction between the Others as they flesh out the world. I would anticipate this intensifying in the third part, although the author seems to be good enough as to pull something new out of the bag. He is also relaxed enough to name check the writer Pelevin, whose own work on vampires and werewolves in Moscow is also causing something of a stir.