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I used to read a lot of science fiction – often more than one book at a time, and finishing several books a week. But over the past few years, as my internet use has gone up, the amount of book reading I’ve done has gone down dramatically. To the point where it takes me so long to finish a book I forget what it’s about and start over, and eventually give up.

Lately I’ve been trying to reverse this trend, and I’ve found the perfect books to snap me out of it: The Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko (well, the English translations of them). Dave heard about the Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor) film before it was released internationally, and we managed to get hold of the DVD on eBay. This was an interesting exercise in itself; even though the DVD was legit, so much dodgy stuff comes out of Russia that the only way of getting the payment through was a Travelex transfer, which cost an absolute fortune. The Travelex agent tried to talk us out of sending money to Russia too!

We loved the film, which is kind of a dark Russian fairytale set in modern times with Matrix-like elements. Essentially it’s about the Others – people with extraordinary/magical skills, who are either Dark Ones (sorcerers, witches, vampires and werewolves) or Light Ones (magicians, enchantresses, healers etc). There is a treaty between the two sides, which are very evenly matched, so that for every dark or evil act that is allowed (such as a vampire being issued a “license” to hunt a human), a light or good act is allowed (such as turning a criminal away from a potential crime). Policing the treaty are two “Watches” – The Night Watch, which is made up of Light Others who keep an eye on the Dark Others, and the Day Watch, made up of Dark Others who keep an eye on the Light Others.

It was hard to follow – we watched it in Russian with subtitles – but it was definitely worth persevering with. Apparently the US release was recut so it would make more sense, which I don’t like the idea of at all. When the sequel Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor) came out we grabbed it too – thankfully it was released internationally so it was much easier to get.

After the success of the films, the series of books they were based on were translated into English. I was initially a bit wary of trying to read a translation, but I shouldn’t have been concerned – there was no problem understanding them and they read very naturally. The first book, Night Watch, took a week or so to read; the second, Day Watch, took a few days; and Twilight Watch (Dusk Watch) took less than a day: so I definitely think I’m getting my reading mojo back! I don’t have the final instalment, End Watch (Final Watch) – yet. I plan to get it this week, but getting to the end of the series is going to suck.

The first thing that stuck me about the books is that the first and second films are actually based mostly on the first and second parts of the first book only, but the opening scene of the Night Watch film is a variation on the opening scene of the Day Watch book. Many changes like this have been made to the story but that’s inevitable –the story as written is far too complex for film anyway, I think.

Reading the books definitely made the films much easier to understand. One thing that cleared a lot of confusion is that in the subtitled version we had, they keep referring to various individuals as “The Other” when in fact they mean “an Other” – which may seem like a subtle difference but it clarifies the story a great deal when you don’t think they’re spotting some kind of special individual every five minutes.

I’m a science fiction fan but not usually a fantasy fan, but I guess this series does fall quite squarely into the fantasy bucket. Highly recommended (both the films and the books).

Posted in fiction, movies
Tags: Day Watch, Dusk Watch, fantasy, Final Watch, Night Watch, reviews, science fiction