The phenomenal Russian bestseller. A vampire novel set in a richly realized post-Soviet Moscow, The Night Watch has sold across Europe and to 20th Century Fox for huge advances.
In The Night Watch, the first of a quartet, and reminiscent of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials in its ambitions and achievement, the setting is contemporary Moscow. A small number of Muscovites with supernatural powers - those who are Other, owing allegiance either to the Dark or the Light - co-exist in an uneasy truce, each side keeping a close eye on the other's activities around the city.
Anton, an Other on the side of the Light, is a night-watchman, patrolling the streets and Metro of the city as he protects ordinary people from the vampires of the Dark. On his rounds, Anton comes across a young woman, Svetlana, whom he realizes is under a curse that threatens the entire city, and a boy, Igor, a young Other, as yet unaware of his own enormous power. Partnered by Olga, an Other who is in the form of an owl, he struggles to remove the curse and thereby save the city, while at the same time prevent Igor from falling into the clutches of the Dark.
The Night Watch explores the nature of good and evil and the tensions between the individual and the collective in a gripping narrative that owes as much to The Master and Margarita as it is does to the richly realized worlds of Philip Pullman and Tolkien.
Industry Reviews
"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
" " 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"
