When you're part of the Night Watch. Sergei Lukyanenko's first novel in his magic as good and evil series comes in three parts, linked but which could stand alone. The format was the more interesting part so I'll address plot briefly. The plot is good, the concept is fun, good and evil magicians/vampires/werewolves/etc. have a pact of non-intervention with human morality, and this pact is guarded by the Night Watch (good), Day Watch (evil) and Inquisition (who watches the watches). We follow a Night Watch man Anton as he deals with truth and Truth within these parameters.
Minor problem: the translation leaves enough hints of the underlying Russian to make me wish I had an affinity to speak other languages. Alas some things are beyond me. I suspect that I'm missing some idiom and experience that living in Moscow would fill in.
The structure of the novel though was interesting. It's three almost independent short stories, in chronological order, that touch on major events in Anton's development and understanding. This works alright for the plot, but it leaves behind the interludes, and I suspect that a lot of character development happens in those interludes. I'd like to have had a better glance at those interactions, you get hints of them, but they are only echoes. I'm not sure if that is a layer in the book, which is certainly full of those.
Read it, it's good. If you read in Russian, let me know if it's better like that.
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