Book 1 of The Night Watch series
Read by Paul Michael
Genre: urban fantasy
Format: paperback & audiobook
About The Night Watch:
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...Source: Info in the About The Night Watch was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1029770.The_Night_Watch on 18/04/2013.
I like the world building and the premise. After all I am an urban fantasy girl, so vampires, magicians, and shapeshifters are totally sold on me. I also like the way Sergei Lukyanenko presented good and evil in the book. That one is pure poetic brilliance! What I didn't like was the plot depending on the hero to behave stupidly to create a dilemma in the story. Rather pathetic plot building skills there. So the boss clearly and carefully instructed Anton not to be alone. Not even for a single second. Even told him the reason why so that he would cooperate more fully. So what does our hero does the first chance he gets? He walks off alone so that the bad guys can frame him for murder. Yep, too stupid to live (TSTL)! Walked right into the trap whistling a tune (so to speak). To be fair though the story narrative did emphasize that Anton is a lousy field operative. First Garik made him that something is wrong. Then Svetlana, despite Anton being supposedly better than that because he is supposed to be an experienced field operative with years of training. Yes, our main protagonist is a non-hero. One thing you can say about it though is that there is character development consistency! Even though, I still find the TSTL royally annoying! Then the story telling quality drags at times. For the first three quarters into the book I had to stretch my perseverance because I found myself wanting breaks from it. Such that even with the convenience of the audiobook it still took me two weeks or so to finish the book. I didn't appreciate the story until the very end. Now am looking forward to reading Book 2.
When I take the book apart in the Empirical Evaluation the book ought to score only a 3 out of 5 but when I look at the book as a whole, it feels like a 4. So am giving it a 4 in contradiction to my empirical evaluation. This don't usually happen, but sometimes the whole is more than the sum of it's parts.
Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 3
Character development = 3
Story itself = 4.5
Ending = 4.5
World building = 4
Cover art = 3
Pace = paperback: 1.5 (audiobook: 14 hrs and 44 mins listening time)
Plot = 2
Narrator = 4
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 cherries
Books In The The Night Watch series:
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