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Beneath the gaze of the crowded Moscow streets another world
exists just out of reach, the world of the Others. Powerful
beings endowed with magical abilities, a world of witches,
werewolves and vampires who belong to one of the two Watches.
The Night Watch patrols the evening making sure that the followers
of the Dark keep within the Great Treaty, but when the sun
comes up it is the turn of the Day Watch to monitor the followers
of Light. The Watches exist to maintain the tentative peace
between the followers of Light and Dark, but in the grey spaces
in between the night and day the Watches vie for power and
the destiny of the human race...
The
Day Watch is the second part of the Night Watch Trilogy
by Sergei Lukyanenko, not to be confused with the film
of the same name by Timur Bekmambetov, which in
fact was the second part of the first book The
Night Watch, very confusing.
Like
its predecessor, The Night Watch, The Day Watch
is a hefty tome of a book running to 487 packed pages. Whilst
the first part contained three interconnected stories, this
book contains only two.
For fans of the first book the first story Unauthorised
Personnel Permitted throws you a bit. The story concerns
the consequences of a confrontation between the operatives
of the Day and Night Watch. Alisa, a witch, and an ex-lover
of the leader of the Day Watch is injured to the point where
all her powers are drained leaving her more "human"
than "other". Sent off to a children's camp to recover,
she meets and falls in love with Igor who, unbeknownst to
her, is a recovering magician of Light. Their love can only
end in conflict and a fight to the death.
As
a big fan of the first book, I was kind of thinking: "What
the hell?" Okay, the story is written from the perspective
of a member of the Day Watch, which allows Lukyanenko to further
explore the grey area where good and evil dwell, and it's
not as if isn't well written, its just that after the labyrinthine
plot of the first book this initially seemed fairly light
fare.
I really should have more faith in Lukyanenko's writing -
or at the very least remembered the first novel where seemingly
inconsequential events were introduced only to turn out to
be the linchpin of the overall book - and so it is with this
book.
In
the second story, A Stranger Among Others, Edgar arrives
in Moscow devoid of much of his memory but with the feeling
of growing power. Through a series of murders, which he is
inextricably drawn to, but is innocent of, he comes to the
notice of both the Day and Night Watch. I won't spoil the
whole plot for you and truth to tell it's another brilliant
piece of intricate writing, which only comes to fruition in
the very last pages.
The
Day Watch is a more than worthy successor to The Night
Watch, wonderfully written and brilliantly translated,
from the Russian, by Andrew Bromfield. Anyone who is a fan
of fantasy horror really should add this one to his or her
collection. Now all we await is for the publication of The
Twilight Watch to complete the trilogy.
 
Charles
Packer
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