Watching the Watches...

I just finished the ‘Watch’ series; Night Watch, Day Watch, and Twilight Watch. This is going to be a very hard review as a) they are a trilogy and I try my darndest when review series books not to reveal TOO much and b) there are two movies based on one of the books.
I say b) because BOTH movies- Night Watch and Day Watch were both ‘based’ rather loosely on the Night Watch BOOK. Each Watch book has 3 stories and the movies sort of mashed up the stories in Night Watch. I say mashed up because there were definitely key elements that were changed. I am OF COURSE not going to mention that x was done differently in the book… because again I don’t want to spoil anything.

That said what the movies and books have in common is that they are about Magicians, Enchantresses, Vampires and other magical things that take place in Modern Day Moscow. The Magic Users are called Others and for the most part are able to see different levels of reality- they call it Twilight. In the books there are in fact multiple levels of the Twilight, though I’m not sure if in the movies there were more then one…
The two sides- Good (Night Watch) and Evil (Day Watch) have basically signed a peace treaty and the Watches exist to keep the peace. Vampires have to ask the Night Watch for ‘hunting’ licenses and if a Magician does ‘too much’ good, s/he is brought in by the Day Watch- who either punish the good person or negotiates a chance to do an equal amount of ‘evil’ magic. So the good guys patrol the Night to make sure that the things that go bump in the night behaves; and the bad guys patrol the Day to make sure the good guys aren’t TOO nice.
In the books, we also have the Inquisition aka Twilight Watch. THEY are the people who watch the Watchmen. It’s the Inquisition’s job to make sure that the good guys don’t ‘get away’ with anything behind the bad guy’s backs. The Inquisition’s ranks we’re told is drawn mainly from the Watches, while Day Watch and Night Watch draw their ranks from similarly minded others.
Each book is divided into 3 smaller ‘books’ (as they call it) or stories. Night Watch and Twilight Watch are for the most part told first person by Anton- a member of the Night Watch and our ‘hero’. In Day Watch we get two members of the Day Watch to tell their stories and the third story there is told 3rd person and balances the action between a member of the Day Watch and his opposite number in the Night Watch.

I think that’s all I can really say- save for the fact that I really liked the books and would highly recommend them. And, because they are translated from Russian, I’m not sure who to credit the good writing to- the original writer who came up with these wonderful stories or the translator who made it possible for me to read it in English and kept the story flowing. I figure both ‘writers’ deserve credit… As of course whoever wrote the screen play… as I also recommend the Night Watch and Day Watch movies.

Oh and for ‘official’ score- that’s books 19, 20 and 21.