The Night Watch
Author(s): Sergei Lukyanenko
All that stands between the darkness and the light is The Night Watch.
Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are The Other. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists in parallel to our own, each owes allegiance either to The Dark or The Light. The two factions, having long before realise that an open struggle can only create chaos and disaster, coexist in an uneasy truce, each side aware of, and keeping a close eye on, the other's activities around the city. Despite their leanings towards good and evil, their aim is not mutual destruction, but rather the maintenance of the precarious balance between the two.
Anton, an young Other, who owes allegiance to the Light, is a Night Watch agent, patrolling the streets and Metro of the city, as he protects ordinary people from the vampires and magicians of the Dark. On his rounds, Anton comes across a young woman, Svetlana, who he realises is under a powerful curse that threatens the entire city, and a boy, Egor, a young Other, too young to have committed to either The Dark or The Light and as yet unaware of his own enormous power, whom Anton narrowly saves from vampires.
Anton is assigned a partner, Olga, a powerful female Other who is in the form of an owl in punishment for a past error of judgement. Together with their colleagues in the Night Watch, they struggle to remove Svetlana's curse and to protect Egor from the vampires that pursue him.
Set in a vividly realised post-Soviet Russia, where vampires operate under license and Good and Evil exist in a Cold War-like balance of power, The Night Watch is a page-turning fantasy thriller, an international bestseller that represents the most original writing in its genre since Anne Rice's An Interview With A Vampire.
First published in Russian 2004; this tranlation 2006.
Product Information
All that stands between darkness and light is The Night Watch... The phenomenal Russian bestseller (over a million copies sold in hardcover), a gloriously readable grunge fantasy/vampire novel set in a richly realised post-Soviet Moscow. First of a trilogy, Night Watch has sold across Europe and to 20th Century Fox for huge advances. 20041130
"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."
--"The New York Times
""The Night Watch" "is inventive, sardonic and imbued with a surprising sense that, for this author and his audience, much of this stuff is new-minted." --"The Independent" (UK)
A "sceptical, intelligent thriller."-"Telegraph" (UK)
"Fascinating. . . . [The] excellent translation by Andrew Bromfield keeps the pace moving. . . . One of the most original and readable supernatural fictions in some time."-"Scotland on Sunday
""Brace yourself for Harry Potter in Gorky Park. . . . The novel contains some captivating scenes and all kinds of marvelous, inventive detail: The vampires' seduction of a teenage boy is bone-chilling; every time Lukyanenko described the Other-worldly Twilight, I felt lured into it; and the fantastical powers exercised by Anton and his colleagues range from delightful to awesome."- Ron Charles, "The Washington Post Book World
""Lukyanenko is great at rolling out new concepts for the reader to savour."-"The Sydney Morning Herald "(Australia)
"[As] potent as a shot of vodka. . . . [A] compelling urban fantasy."-"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)
"This modern day mythical fantasy is Anne Rice on an epic scale, a hugely imagined world. A chiller thriller from cold of Russia, this one's been selling like hot cakes around the world." --"Sunday Sport
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Sergei Lukyanenko is a prolific writer, author of over 25 books. The three volumes of the Night Watch Trilogy have sold over two million hardcovers between them. Night Watch has been adapted into a hugely successful film, which outgrossed The Return of the King and the latest Harry Potter in Russia, and has been distributed round the world. The Hollywood remake should be even bigger.
General Fields
- :
- : wilhei
- : wilhei
- : 0.65
- : 06 July 2006
- : 235mm X 153mm X 36mm
- : United Kingdom
- : books
Special Fields
- : Sergei Lukyanenko
- : Paperback
- : 1
- : 891.7344
- : 496
