The Night Watch, by Sergei Lukyanenko

After reading this book, I start to see how the movie relates. So, first off;
Lukyanenko wrote 3 books, in the following order: Night Watch, Day Watch, Twilight Watch. They are all part of the Night Watch series, and are sometimes called Night Watch, Night Watch II and Night Watch III. The movie that I saw (DayWatch) actually takes one small section from Night Watch, dealing with the Chalk of Fate (there are 3 books within each novel). I suspect the movie NightWatch, being a prequel to DayWatch, deals with the other 2 book the precede the Chalk of Fate in Night Watch. Yes, that was quite confusing to me as well. And there are still discrepancies between the movie and the book; ironically, having seen the movie, my mental images of Anton, Egor, Svetlana and the rest of the cast have been permanently affixed.

So, anyway, The Night Watch. I like the way Lukyanenko writes. While sometimes dull, the main character's introspection provides a lot of rich background to the story. I did not realize this when I read the book called Day Watch (all along I thought the book was related to the movie, but it is only slightly related). The idea of remoralization is rather interesting, and Lukyanenko starts to build a picture of a kind of "good vs evil" plot. But the "good" guys are not perfect, and the "evil" guys are not all bad. This makes the story seem a little more real, and little more believable. The magic system is a bit far-fetched, but I found it refreshingly so. The Twilight is a huge mystery, and it seems that even the most powerful folks do not fully understand it. I find the various players, their skill levels and individual personalities quite fascinating. In a way I am glad I saw the movie first, because it set the stage for my mind to have awesome special affects preprogrammed! *grin*