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selenakThe first volume of this Russian fantasy saga was filmed in recent years, but I haven't seen the movie version yet; I only just read the novels, published here in Germany in a handy though giant volume. While I'm not sure about the Lord of the Rings comparisons and think the Harry Potter comparisons are ridiculous (totally different type of story; it's a true apples and oranges case), I think it's a remarkable achievement, and can recommend it enthusiastically. Which doesn't mean I didn't find things to critisize.
A word about the structure first: all three volumes in themselves consist of three loosely connected novellas, with the end of each making clear how they all draw together. Each volume switches between third person and first person narration, with the first person narrator being usually, but not always, Anton Gorodetsky (the exception to this comes in Day Watch where one of the three stories is narrated by the witch Alissa), who is the main character. All three novels are set in present day Moscow, one trip to Prague aside, and while the backstory occasionally becomes important, there are no flashbacks. The tone of the novels reminds me mostly of film noir, or to stay in the literary equivalent, hard-boiled detective fiction, or perhaps the John Le Carré type of spy novels, with a unvoluntarily fully echo of one particularly type of fanfiction - song fic, no less. (Anton listens to quite a lot of music, the lyrics of which are prone to show up now and then.) And yes, it also firmly belongs in the fantasy epic category, given that the world it creates, but I would still put the emphasis on the noir/ Le Carré element, for reasons I'll explain.
World-building: this is done very well, on two fronts. Firstly, the Watch novels postulate that a magical realm exists just below the surface - the Twilight - which certain humans can access. The refer to themselves as the Others (if you're watching Lost, this is bound to make you smile for a moment), and are divided between Light and Dark Others. This, however, is where the novels part company with your usual fantasy set-up, because an epic struggle with one side winning is the absolutely last thing both sides want. They're basically in a cold war type of situation, very aware that if there ever is real war again (as there used to be in centuries past), they'll wipe out each other and the rest of humanity due to the sheer scale of power both sides have, and no one will win. Which is why they have the Treaty, with the Night Watch (= Light Others policing) and the Day Watch (= Dark Others policing) created to make sure neither side becomes to powerful and sticks to the basic rules agreed on. Said rules are very shade of grey, no pun intended. For example, vampires draining humans are punishable only if they do this unlicensed; otherwise they're within their rights. Every spectacular good deed gives the other side the right to commit an evil act on a similar scale, and so forth. Meanwhile, there is a lot of scheming against each other behind the scenes going on, precisely because there can be no open war. See what I mean about the noir/Le Carré thing?
The other part where the world-building is done well is that this is very much a Russian series of novels; you couldn't change the setting to another country, let alone another continent, and not just because of the well-described Moscow setting. The characters are all formed by the Russian past and present, the Communist system and its breakdown, the current day autocratic capitalism, the vodka-plus-water solution (not so much!) to being depressed, with Baba Yaga, Lenin and WWII all imprinted on their consciousness as much as Other folklore is. (In the second novel, Anton and Dark Other Edgar have a hilarious encounter with an American Other in Prague. In which they temporarily overcome light and dark differences in order to bitch together about Americans and their claim to have "liberated Prague" where the American army never was during WWII.) And about how Czechs don't really know what "cold" means, as opposed to Russians.*g*
The novels have a huge cast of characters, both male and female. My main criticism of the entire saga, though, concerns the female characters. Much of the plot in Night Watch centers around Svetlana, a Doctor who turns out to have the potential to become one of the greatest sorceresses of all time. Unfortunately, she's very much a passive character, either the object of Anton's rescue efforts and later romantic angst or the object of Geser's (leader of the Night Watch) and Zebulon's (leader of the Day Watch) scheming. If one of your story's dilemmas is "will she give up much of her humanity in order to become a Grand Sorceress?" and this is entirely determined by the male characters, you have a problem. Especially if you add a "make her the mother of the messiah" scheme, though points for at least making the messiah in question female instead of male. (It also doesn't help that the romance between Svetlana and Anton basically takes place off stage; they go from having met to being a couple between novellas.) Granted, by Twilight Watch, Svetlana does come across as active instead of passive, and quite convincingly so, but by this time she's not part of the central plots anymore. Then we have the other Grand Sorceress, Olga, who is probably the most interesting female character, a centuries old sorceress who at the start is punished by being in an owl's body since more then sixty years, becomes Anton's cop partner and has a romantic backstory (continuing into present day) with Geser, which manages to come across as more or less one of equals, with Olga fond but not awed. The middle sequence of Night Watch, for she and Anton switch (human) bodies for a while for plot reasons, is the highlight of their buddies relationship as well as a clever use of the "male character stuck in female body and vice versa" trope. So imagine my frustration when Olga all but disappears from the novels after Night Watch. In theory, she's still there, the other characters mention her several times in the present, but she doesn't get any on stage scenes. On the Dark Side of things, we have Alissa. Who spends the first novel as Zabulon's girlfriend but only important in that he makes a trade to save her, and in the second gets a none-too-convincing romance with a Light Sider, plus tragic death, the main purpose of which is to illustrate male angst and to demonstrate ruthlessness on Zabulon's part. To be fair: in Twilight Watch, we get a witch named Irina (something for Alias watchers), who isn't anyone's love interest or pawn, is completely shades of grey and doesn't die. But until then, it's a long stretch.
Back to the good stuff again. Usually, mentor figures come in two variations: they're either wise old man who die tragically, thus inspiring (and guilting) the hero, or they turn out to be ruthless and or/corrupt bastards secretly screwing the hero over, with a pseudo-Oedipal confrontation at the end of their storyline. Occasionally, they manage to be both, though one more than the other. (Dumbledore, for instance.) The Watch novels come up with yet another variation. The boss of the Night Watch, Gesar (aka Boris Ignatievitch, aka the legendary Tibetan), is smart and ruthless enough to outscheme just about most fictional characters, but has no intention of dying tragically or go for the death-by-hero variation (never becoming a megalomaniac has something do to with it). He's fond the people working for him but not above using them as pawns, and despite one of the oldest characters of the novel the one I'd mostly ping as being connected to the Cold War/Le Carré type of fiction, because mild-mannered morally shady spy-masters so belong in that period. One of my favourite descriptions of him comes up when Anton asks in Twilight Watch, "why is it that every time I come into your office, I think you're a complete bastard, and within ten minutes you have me convinced you did it all for the greater good?" Because, well, he usually does do it for the greater good (which doesn't make it better for the people involved, of course). And has a thing for meeting in odd restaurants (I was expecting a Star Trek convention next) that makes it impossible not to find it endearing. Also, his opposite number, Zabulon, basically admits to fancying him when they temporarily team up in the third novel. In short, Geser hits every button I have for manipulative older types of either gender.
Lastly: it really doesn't get less shades of grey and more black and white, which is what some other stories starting out in shades of grey do. Anton never has all the answers; he has to make his decisions about what he thinks is right on an ongoing basis. And as his is the main but not the only pov, we can see that so do the other characters.
A word about the structure first: all three volumes in themselves consist of three loosely connected novellas, with the end of each making clear how they all draw together. Each volume switches between third person and first person narration, with the first person narrator being usually, but not always, Anton Gorodetsky (the exception to this comes in Day Watch where one of the three stories is narrated by the witch Alissa), who is the main character. All three novels are set in present day Moscow, one trip to Prague aside, and while the backstory occasionally becomes important, there are no flashbacks. The tone of the novels reminds me mostly of film noir, or to stay in the literary equivalent, hard-boiled detective fiction, or perhaps the John Le Carré type of spy novels, with a unvoluntarily fully echo of one particularly type of fanfiction - song fic, no less. (Anton listens to quite a lot of music, the lyrics of which are prone to show up now and then.) And yes, it also firmly belongs in the fantasy epic category, given that the world it creates, but I would still put the emphasis on the noir/ Le Carré element, for reasons I'll explain.
World-building: this is done very well, on two fronts. Firstly, the Watch novels postulate that a magical realm exists just below the surface - the Twilight - which certain humans can access. The refer to themselves as the Others (if you're watching Lost, this is bound to make you smile for a moment), and are divided between Light and Dark Others. This, however, is where the novels part company with your usual fantasy set-up, because an epic struggle with one side winning is the absolutely last thing both sides want. They're basically in a cold war type of situation, very aware that if there ever is real war again (as there used to be in centuries past), they'll wipe out each other and the rest of humanity due to the sheer scale of power both sides have, and no one will win. Which is why they have the Treaty, with the Night Watch (= Light Others policing) and the Day Watch (= Dark Others policing) created to make sure neither side becomes to powerful and sticks to the basic rules agreed on. Said rules are very shade of grey, no pun intended. For example, vampires draining humans are punishable only if they do this unlicensed; otherwise they're within their rights. Every spectacular good deed gives the other side the right to commit an evil act on a similar scale, and so forth. Meanwhile, there is a lot of scheming against each other behind the scenes going on, precisely because there can be no open war. See what I mean about the noir/Le Carré thing?
The other part where the world-building is done well is that this is very much a Russian series of novels; you couldn't change the setting to another country, let alone another continent, and not just because of the well-described Moscow setting. The characters are all formed by the Russian past and present, the Communist system and its breakdown, the current day autocratic capitalism, the vodka-plus-water solution (not so much!) to being depressed, with Baba Yaga, Lenin and WWII all imprinted on their consciousness as much as Other folklore is. (In the second novel, Anton and Dark Other Edgar have a hilarious encounter with an American Other in Prague. In which they temporarily overcome light and dark differences in order to bitch together about Americans and their claim to have "liberated Prague" where the American army never was during WWII.) And about how Czechs don't really know what "cold" means, as opposed to Russians.*g*
The novels have a huge cast of characters, both male and female. My main criticism of the entire saga, though, concerns the female characters. Much of the plot in Night Watch centers around Svetlana, a Doctor who turns out to have the potential to become one of the greatest sorceresses of all time. Unfortunately, she's very much a passive character, either the object of Anton's rescue efforts and later romantic angst or the object of Geser's (leader of the Night Watch) and Zebulon's (leader of the Day Watch) scheming. If one of your story's dilemmas is "will she give up much of her humanity in order to become a Grand Sorceress?" and this is entirely determined by the male characters, you have a problem. Especially if you add a "make her the mother of the messiah" scheme, though points for at least making the messiah in question female instead of male. (It also doesn't help that the romance between Svetlana and Anton basically takes place off stage; they go from having met to being a couple between novellas.) Granted, by Twilight Watch, Svetlana does come across as active instead of passive, and quite convincingly so, but by this time she's not part of the central plots anymore. Then we have the other Grand Sorceress, Olga, who is probably the most interesting female character, a centuries old sorceress who at the start is punished by being in an owl's body since more then sixty years, becomes Anton's cop partner and has a romantic backstory (continuing into present day) with Geser, which manages to come across as more or less one of equals, with Olga fond but not awed. The middle sequence of Night Watch, for she and Anton switch (human) bodies for a while for plot reasons, is the highlight of their buddies relationship as well as a clever use of the "male character stuck in female body and vice versa" trope. So imagine my frustration when Olga all but disappears from the novels after Night Watch. In theory, she's still there, the other characters mention her several times in the present, but she doesn't get any on stage scenes. On the Dark Side of things, we have Alissa. Who spends the first novel as Zabulon's girlfriend but only important in that he makes a trade to save her, and in the second gets a none-too-convincing romance with a Light Sider, plus tragic death, the main purpose of which is to illustrate male angst and to demonstrate ruthlessness on Zabulon's part. To be fair: in Twilight Watch, we get a witch named Irina (something for Alias watchers), who isn't anyone's love interest or pawn, is completely shades of grey and doesn't die. But until then, it's a long stretch.
Back to the good stuff again. Usually, mentor figures come in two variations: they're either wise old man who die tragically, thus inspiring (and guilting) the hero, or they turn out to be ruthless and or/corrupt bastards secretly screwing the hero over, with a pseudo-Oedipal confrontation at the end of their storyline. Occasionally, they manage to be both, though one more than the other. (Dumbledore, for instance.) The Watch novels come up with yet another variation. The boss of the Night Watch, Gesar (aka Boris Ignatievitch, aka the legendary Tibetan), is smart and ruthless enough to outscheme just about most fictional characters, but has no intention of dying tragically or go for the death-by-hero variation (never becoming a megalomaniac has something do to with it). He's fond the people working for him but not above using them as pawns, and despite one of the oldest characters of the novel the one I'd mostly ping as being connected to the Cold War/Le Carré type of fiction, because mild-mannered morally shady spy-masters so belong in that period. One of my favourite descriptions of him comes up when Anton asks in Twilight Watch, "why is it that every time I come into your office, I think you're a complete bastard, and within ten minutes you have me convinced you did it all for the greater good?" Because, well, he usually does do it for the greater good (which doesn't make it better for the people involved, of course). And has a thing for meeting in odd restaurants (I was expecting a Star Trek convention next) that makes it impossible not to find it endearing. Also, his opposite number, Zabulon, basically admits to fancying him when they temporarily team up in the third novel. In short, Geser hits every button I have for manipulative older types of either gender.
Lastly: it really doesn't get less shades of grey and more black and white, which is what some other stories starting out in shades of grey do. Anton never has all the answers; he has to make his decisions about what he thinks is right on an ongoing basis. And as his is the main but not the only pov, we can see that so do the other characters.
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Date: 2008-10-04 03:17 pm (UTC)Btw, there are two more books - the Last Watch, which takes place in a gallery of locations from Edinburgh to Tashkient, and the new one I haven't read yet (came out in Russian last year, no Polish translation as of this moment). In The Last Watch, we have Irina again, and Nadia being quite central to the plot in an adorable way (not to mention Svetlana scenes).
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Date: 2008-10-04 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 06:38 pm (UTC)Movies: the first one is visually engaging and has some pretty nice technology, given what must be a comparatively low budget. It also suffers from a certain "look, we're cool!" factor, although less so than the second. The second, well... the scenes where two differently gendered characters changed bodies were fun?
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Date: 2008-10-04 07:02 pm (UTC)As for the woman question. I had not really registered the women as powerless, I think for two reasons. The first is Anton's acceptance of Svetlana's power over him, her infidelity and in fact his own lack of ability to reconcile himself with the magical power which she posesses in levels that so outshine his own, at least initially.
The problem of feminine passivity I think is less problematic in light of the books' narrative validation of considered restraint/deliberate inaction as an heroic strategy first at the end of 'Night Watch', and then again at the end of the third book.
Excellent review, thankyou!
no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 07:32 pm (UTC)Oh, I loved that one!
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Date: 2008-10-04 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 09:27 pm (UTC)With Night Watch, I went away unimpressed - and I *know* that most of that is to do with the language rather than the story, I just couldn't get past the prose. It sounds as though the German translation was better, though - which probably isn't that surprising, given our countries' respective relationships with the Soviet Union; East German translators are going to have a lot more experience at it than English... Unfortunately, I won't even gain much by reading your translation, since my German is mostly good enough for gist rather than nuance!
I'm very happy that there *are* people in non-English-speaking countries creating native SFF, but we Anglos aren't used to not being able to read all the big new names in the original :) SPOILED, I say.
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Date: 2008-10-04 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-05 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-12 07:25 pm (UTC)