Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s New Watch. Translated by Andrew Bromfield (The Watches pentalogy #5) Profile: Modern Fantasy, Suspense, Horror Sergei Lukyanenko ostensibly drew his Watches series to a conclusion with Last Watch, but almost six years later he released a fifth book. New Watch is a very different kind of novel than its predecessors. It draws inspiration from other contemporary and urban fantasies, most notably the Harry Potter series. There is a greater emphasis on the mechanics of the world’s magic system, answering some questions from previous novels, but shifting […]
This review is acceptable to the forces of Darkness
Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s Last Watch. Translated by Andrew Bromfield (The Watches pentalogy #4) Profile: Modern Fantasy, Suspense, Urban Fantasy So, I spent a really unreasonable amount of time waiting for and then looking for the Harper paperback release of Last Watch. I waited so long that the fifth book in the series was published stateside and my copy actually started to gather dust on my shelf. Eventually I contacted Harper Collins which prompted a very curt autoreply informing me that they didn’t have the publication rights. Although the […]
This review is of no relevance to the cause of Light
Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s Twilight Watch. Translated by Andrew Bromfield (The Watches pentalogy #3) Profile: Modern Fantasy, Suspense, Horror Sergei Lukyanenko’s Watches books have utterly captivated me. The moody atmosphere and strong characterization drive an uncompromising examination of good and evil. Oh, and the story isn’t bad either. Where Day Watch acted as the natural extension of Night Watch, exploring some of the same material from the perspective of Darkness, Twilight Watch almost starts from scratch with a new, overriding storyline that runs through all three sections of the book. While the […]
This review has been banned for distribution as injurious to the cause of Darkness -The Day Watch
Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s Day Watch. Translated by Andrew Bromfield (The Watches pentalogy #2) Profile: Modern Fantasy, Suspense, Horror Day Watch is a strong successor to the gritty, twilight world that Sergei Lukyanenko introduced us to in Night Watch. After exploring the moral dilemmas facing a ‘good’ person trying to maintain a status quo that is anything but good, Lukyanenko shifts his focus to take a look at the bad guys. That being said, Day Watch isn’t as strong overall as its prequel, partly because the Dark Others aren’t faced with […]
This review has been approved for distribution as conducive to the cause of Light -The Night Watch
Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch. Translated by Andrew Bromfield Profile: Urban Fantasy, Suspense, Horror, The Watches Pentalogy (Read in stereotypical movie preview voiceover) In a world where epic battles between good and evil are a dime a dozen on the Teen Fantasy shelves, one Russian author struggles to bring a sense of subtly and realism to stories about vampires, werewolves and wizards. (End voiceover) And that’s to his credit. Lukyanenko’s vision of a supernatural world where nothing is as it seems sounds trite on paper, but […]