The Day Watch (Watch, Book 2)
The second book in the internationally bestselling fantasy series, Day Watch begins where Night Watch left off, set in a modern-day Moscow where the 1,000-year-old treaty between Light and Dark maintains its uneasy balance through careful vigilance from the Others. The forces of darkness keep an eye during the day, the Day Watch, while the agents of Light monitor the nighttime. Very senior Others called the Inquisitors are the impartial judges insisting on the essential compact. When a very potent artifact is stolen from them, the consequences are dire and drastic for all sides. Day Watch introduces the perspective of the Dark Ones, as it is told in part by a young witch who bolsters her evil power by leeching fear from children’s nightmares as a counselor at a girls’ summer camp. When she falls in love with a handsome young Light One, the balance is threatened and a death must be avenged.Day Watch is replete with the thrilling action and intricate plotting of the first tale, fuelled by cunning, cruelty, violence, and magic. It is a fast paced, darkly humorous, haunting world that will take root in the shadows of your mind and live there forever. From Publishers Weekly Review About the Author This review is injurious to the causes of Light and Dark My Darker Side Was All Giddy.... Great SequelProduct Details
Editorial Reviews
The morally ambiguous second volume in Lukyanenko's trilogy (after 2006's Night Watch, a major literary and cinematic success in Russia) portrays the epic supernatural struggle between good and evil from the point-of-view of the witch Alisa Donnikova. Lukyanenko imagines a parallel reality, where human history has been shaped by a centuries-old conflict between the Dark Ones and the Light Ones, magical beings whose existence is kept carefully hidden from humanity. After Alisa, a Dark One, loses her powers in a minor confrontation with some Light Ones, she heads to the Crimea to recuperate at a girls' camp, where she feeds on children's nightmares. There she falls in love with Igor, who turns out to be a Light magician. The plot centers on the ramifications of their romance and the theft of Fafnir's Talon, a powerful artifact whose provenance is linked to the legendary Ring of the Nibelungs. Though the artifact conceit is less well developed than that of the truth-telling instrument in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, the fast-paced story augurs well for the last installment. (Mar.)
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"Night Watch is an epic of extraordinary power." -- Quentin Tarantino
"Star Wars meets the Vampires in Moscow . . . it bursts with a sick, carnivorous glee in its fiendish games." -- New York Times
"A pixilated-vampire-superhero, rock-and-roll, Matrix-style thriller that’s up there with the genre’s most exhilarating and ridiculous." -- New York
Born in Kazakhstan and educated as a psychiatrist, Sergei Lukyanenko began publishing science fiction work in the 1980s. He is currently developing a TV series based on Night Watch and a new novel that incorporates suggestions from readers submitted on his website. Andrew Bromfield is a founding editor of the Russian literature journal Glas. His work has been short-listed for numerous translation prizes.Customer Reviews
The previous book left us with an unbalanced Moscow. The forces of Light gained a powerful ally in the form of Svetlana Nazarova, a potential Great Sorceress. Even before she knew she was an Other - one of that mysterious class of beings who can work magic, who can curse, bless and change their shapes - she was able to create a curse that very nearly destroyed Moscow. She, and the city, were saved through the bravery of Anton Gorodetsky and the Night Watch, who guard against the excesses of the forces of Darkness. In the end, the Light prevailed.
But this battle between Light and Dark is far from over....
As with The Night Watch, this volume contains three books. In the first, a young witch named Alisa Donnikova has overreached herself. In a fight with the Night Watch, Alisa poured every last drop of her magical energy into supporting her fellow Day Watch members, an act of selflessness that nearly cost her her life. Burned out, she's directed to take a break at a children's summer camp in the Crimea. Posing as a camp counselor, she would be in a prime position to feed off the nightmares of impressionable young girls.
A word about Others and their powers. The foundation of an Other's power comes from humans. While any Other has her own reserves to call on, she may... feed on the normal people around her. The Light Others take happiness and joy - literally. Have you ever been feeling really good, and then somehow the feeling just drains away? That's what the Light Others do, and it powers them to no end. Much like a flowering shrub, pruning someone's happiness doesn't make it go away forever, and it may even come back greater, but still - in order to become stronger, the Light Others have to weaken people.
Those on the side of the Dark, on the other hand, feed off of fear and anger, but when they do, that fear and anger remain. It's like warming yourself by the fire - as long as you keep feeding it, it'll keep you warm. A Dark Other at the height of his power could probably super-charge himself just by going to a snowed-in airport for a day. Believe me. This stew of rage and frustration is a little too much for Alisa, however - she must subsist on the "thin broth" that is children's nightmares.
While she's there, however, her plan hits a snag in the form of a handsome, solid, beautiful man named Igor. Despite herself, she falls in love with him, and she falls hard.
The fact that he's a Light Other doesn't come up until it's much too late.
The second story brings a mysterious figure to Moscow. Vitaly Rogoza has no memory of who he is or where he came from. All he knows is that he has to go to Moscow, and that he has power - the power of a Dark Other. Despite his personal amnesia, he has no trouble ingratiating himself with the Moscow Day Watch, and soon discovers that his power appears to have no upper limits. Why this should be, no one knows. Is he some Dark magician, beyond classification? Or is he something else entirely - something new and terrible? Whatever he is, what is his goal, and what is his link to the theft of Fafnir's Talon, a Dark artefact of unspeakable power?
The third story brings it all together - the sad fate of Alisa Dinnokova, the theft of the Talon, and thhe rise and fall of the Great Sorceress Svetlana Nazarova. What's more, the greater plans of the Light and the Dark are laid bare - and changed forever.
As before this book is heavily laden with tthe philosophy of Good versus Evil, Light and Dark. More importantly, it addresses the issues of freedom, a central tenet to the forces of Darkness. How free, they ask, can we really be?
The Light wants to make humanity better. They believe that, given the right influences and incentives, humanity can be great. But they need to be guided. Molded. Shaped. Consequently, the Light occasionally embarks on grand, world-changing plans, few of which actually work out the way they intend.
The Dark, on the other hand, worships freedom. Every person, they say, should be free to choose his or her own path. If that path means doing good, then so be it. If it means doing evil, well, that's cool too. The point is that every person is capable of deciding how their lives should be led, and no one - human or Other - should be able to take that freedom away from them.
It's one of the oldest questions there is - how much freedom do we really deserve? And it's a question that can never be definitively answered. But in these books, it's fun to watch it play out.
The second book in the Watch series that mainly follows Alisa; Anton is still here but not in the capacity that we have grown accustomed. This is do to this book is from the perspective of the Day Watch (Dark Others). This gets us more in touch with the other sides characters and even sheds light on why dark and light others don't mix....or shouldn't? You get to learn a lot more about Alisa the right hand of Zebulon and even how Zebulon's mind works. I liked this one more because it was a way quicker read for me but that's mainly because most characters were introduced in the first and the plot lines of the stories pushed me on. The format is that of the original, with three stories making up one book. But they always end up going full circle and they conclude so you don't have to worry about being kept hanging.
I won't write a summary of the book, as that's already been done in countless reviews, but I will leave you with this: If you enjoyed the first book, then you will also enjoy this second installment in the series.
Day Watch was a fantastic read that I couldn't put down. The book gives you perspective into the Dark ones; you soon realize that the Light ones aren't "good" and the Dark Ones aren't "evil", there are hints of good and evil in both factions.
Can't wait to get my hands on Twilight Watch.
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