My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A quick read, a definite page-turner. As with several of the last few books I’ve read, I’d already seen the movie version and was intrigued. I was in an independent book store in Colorado when I saw it and decided to grab it. This book actually encompasses both movies: Night Watch and Day Watch. It is confusing since there is a second book in the tetralogy entitled Day Watch that is separate. Night Watch, the novel, is pretty significantly different from Night Watch, the movie. I knew that in advance, so I wanted to see how it was originally plotted.

The book, as always, was much better than the movie. As I started off saying, it’s a quick read and it’s not difficult to follow what’s going on. I felt the ending was a little rushed, especially after reading through three parts to get to an ending that concluding in a few pages, seemingly wrapping up everything very quickly and cleanly. Perhaps the other three books in the series would help flesh it out and make for a much longer story arc.

One thought that ran through my head was whether this book might be like a modern reworking of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, at least exploring some of the same themes and still set in Moscow. There are some surface similarities, but I’d recommend reading Bulgakov over Lukyanenko. But, I still must say that I enjoyed reading Night Watch.