Tom Baker / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
The Night Watch
By Sergei Lukyanenko
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
William Heinemann, 496 pp, 10.99 pounds
Imagine a vodka-swilling, middle-aged Harry Potter with blood on his hands and you've got the basic concept behind The Night Watch, a best-selling Russian novel now available in English.
In this book, the population of Moscow includes several supernaturally gifted minorities collectively known as Others: witches, wizards, seers, vampires, werewolves and so on. Some are Light and some are Dark, and the two sides have been at war with each other for as long as anyone can remember, although an uneasy truce is in effect at the moment.
Light and Dark are not quite synonymous with good and evil. Dark Others use their powers for selfish ends, while Light Others use theirs for the greater good of humanity. But the "greater" good can be used to justify lesser evils. Each side feels free to use violence and trickery in its struggle against the other.
This troubles the book's hero, Anton, a low-ranking magician with the forces of Light. The Night Watch opens with him in pursuit of a vampire who is violating the truce by excessive and unauthorized hunting. Anton hates it that the truce allows vampires to kill even a small number of humans, yet he also hates it that he may have to kill a vampire for merely following its instincts. Hence his frequent recourse to the vodka bottle.
It may sound like author Sergei Lukyanenko is presenting old genre tropes in a new Russian setting, but he does have some original tricks up his sleeve. For instance, Anton's search for the renegade vampire is interrupted in a subway car when he spies a little black tornado hovering over a fellow passenger's head:
"A black vortex is actually a fairly ordinary phenomenon. If I looked closely, I could make out another five or six of them, hanging over other passengers' heads. But they were all blurred and pale, barely even spinning. The results of perfectly ordinary, nonprofessional curses. Someone yelling after someone else: 'I hope you die, you bastard.' Someone had put it more simply and forcefully: 'Go to hell, will you?' And a little black whirlwind had moved across from the Dark Side, draining good fortune and sucking energy.
"But an ordinary, amateurish, formless curse lasts no more than an hour or two...That black twister hanging over the girl was the genuine article, stabilized and set in motion by an experienced magician. The girl didn't know it yet, but she was already dead."
This passage, very early in the book, completely upends reader expectations. Wizards and vampires may be old hat, but this black vortex business is something new--or at least unusual. Moreover, by linking it to the phenomenon of ordinary rudeness, Lukyanenko creates a bridge between his readers' real world and his characters' supernatural one.
The Night Watch is the first volume of a trilogy, with English-language editions of The Day Watch and The Twilight Watch due out next year. And The Night Watch itself is divided into three parts, each a novella in its own right.
Part one focuses mainly on the black vortex, while part two describes the search for a renegade Light Other who is upsetting the truce by randomly slaying Dark Others. Both stories involve dizzyingly byzantine schemes by one or both sides.
The overly talky third part is almost nothing but schemes, plus some philosophical discussions about good and evil and the unintended consequences of well-intentioned actions. This part often drags, bringing down the overall enjoyableness of the book.
Presumably it reads better in the original Russian version, which sold over a million hardcover copies.
A film adaptation, titled Night Watch, was a major hit at the Russian box office. (It was released on DVD in this country in July, with Japanese and English subtitles.) The movie is a retelling of the vortex tale, condensed to such a degree that people who haven't read the book may find it confusing.
In book or movie form, The Night Watch offers an interesting window on Russian pop culture. And it's not a bad choice if you want to test the traditional Japanese theory that spooky stories are a good way to cool off in the heat of summer.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/bo ... Y22003.htm
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