The Day Watch

I didn't write a review of the first book, but I decided to do with this one, because why the fuck not. Holy shit, these books are cool. Seriously, I absolutely love them and that's all. The supernatural life in Moscow is insane, which is understandable for a city with such a history. We have the Light Others and the Dark Others, trying to maintain a very delicate equilibrium of power over the normal humans. They police each other through the Night Watch (Lights out at night keeping an eye on the Darks) an Day Watch (vice versa), especially during a time when the balance is really close to being completely ruined. Here, as in the first book, we have three little stories that intertwine through the endless, often decades long machinations of the two sides and their bosses. No spoilers, so I can't really say more, especially without talking too much about the first novel. Urban fantasy to me is fun. I just love it, in all kinds of different interpretations. Some just take fantasy creatures and stories and place them in our modern world, some really try to make magic urban through tying it to specific urban locations really hard. This one... is a bit of both, I guess. It's not exactly like the ridiculously overwritten [b:A Madness of Angels 6186355 A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift, #1) Kate Griffin https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1305861910s/6186355.jpg 6366640], where all the specifically city (or even London) places have some creature connected to them. No. Here we simply just have people so damn Russian. You read the book and you just can't imagine the same characters being anywhere else, the prose, the dignified, melancholic air... It's artful. Seriously. Mr. Lukyanenko is not cheating you out of your fantasy elements either. Somehow he managed to make vampires and witches and sorcerers feel fresh and perfectly integrated in life with the technology and lifestyle of Russia in 1999. Which... is exactly the thing some people will not get or appreciate at all. I mean I'm Eastern European, let me tell you, some things will feel pretty damn alien about this book for some people from for example the US. Oh well, it's a very nice change of pace, I guess. I adored the fact that in this book we could see stories about the Dark Others, basically the enemy of the protagonists of the first book and... you could actually have empathy for them. It's truly a story where we observe the moral questions of good and bad, without the limitations of being told the obvious answer. Also, the sides here do misunderstand each other and not always able to see the bigger picture, which gives a further little flavour of them being actual, multifaceted people. Now there was this thing that kind of annoyed me, though. Goddamn song lyrics. Somehow I personally can not appreciate poetry of any kind in novels. It just breaks up the prose, it feels awkward, usually it plain sucks. Here they are translated from Russian to English, which makes it even more awkward to read them. They tie in with the stories, but I still can't appreciate that. Sorry. I'm probably just some uncultured swine, but hey. At this point I have no idea where the story will go next, as we have some overarching storylines, but I am definitely interested. I have no idea why I waited so long with reading this second book, but damn, is this series a ton of fun. I'm definitely picking up the next book. So long and don't come to the dark side. Or light side. Keep it neutral.