Night Watch

The unusual Moscow setting of Night Watch is echoed by its magic system. Lukyanenko’s contemporary world is inhabited by both humans and ‘Others’, supernatural beings who can attune to Dark or Light. These beings keep watch, one group during the day, the other at night, using their powers to maintain the balance. They exist in a magical realm known as the Twilight and began long ago as shamans and wisemen. Their attuenment depends on their emotional state when they entered it, and this also determines which powers they can access. Thus, Lukyanenko creates a world filled with sorcerers and vampires, healers and magicians. Each side recharges its powers through human emotion; dark through the negative ones, and light through the positive. Feeding on bad emotions heightens them, while positive emotions are dulled, creating a system where light is forever overshadowed by darkness. Lukyanenko’s strength is in the detail he renders each power, but he also uses it as a tool. His magic system exists not just for excitement, but to explore concepts of good and evil, and that makes it one of the best around.

Books in Watch Series (5)

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Other books by Lukyanenko, Sergei

Night Watch

Daywatch

The second book in the internationally bestselling Night Watch series—the powers of Darkness and the forces of Light grow closer to war. Tor the past one thousand years, the two... Read more

Twilight Watch

The third book in Sergei Lukyanenko's dark and thrilling Night Watch series—a visionary blend of urban fantasY and riveting thriller, set in contemporary Moscow Night Watch and Day Watch revealed... Read more

The Last Watch

The fourth novel in the blockbuster series from one of Russia's most popular authors, Last Watch returns us to the hyperimaginative world of Sergei Lukyanenko, where the endless battle between... Read more

New Watch

Full of treachery and intrigue, the fifth volume in Sergei Lukyananko’s internationally bestselling Night Watch series—a mesmerizing blend of noir and urban fantasy, set in contemporary Moscow, that tells the... Read more

Night Watch

The origin story of one of fantasy's move loved characters, Sam Vimes and arguably the best Pratchett book out of the entire Discworld canon.Â There is always an underlying rage... Read more

The Night Watch

“[A] wonderful novel…Waters is almost Dickensian in her wealth of description and depth of character.â€—Chicago Tribune Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit partying, and sexual... Read more