Dark Days

Sergei Lukyanenko's second watch book, Day Watch, retains the three part story structure of the first novel, and if anything is more disjoint than novel one. While Night Watch had Anton as the main thread, Day Watch follows two different dark magicians, and then a third person narrator following a tribunal looking into the events of the first two sections. By the end, the common thread has been teased out, and unlike Night Watch, we see our protagonists start pulling on strings themselves, but again the plot itself isn't the interesting part of the book, and frankly shouldn't you go read it yourself?

Like Night Watch was about truth, Day Watch is about love, or maybe Love. It's not a romance, although there are romantic elements throughout, instead it's a practical look at love and conflict, love and power, love and loss, and ultimately love and morality.

Part one lays the groundwork for much of what comes later, but it also drives home one of the main points from the prior book: unbalanced power within a relationship destroys love, or prevents it from accruing. This appears throughout the books and while it's Lukyanenko does not appear to demand equal types of power, he certainly doesn't believe that a love can overcome a power imbalance over time. At the same time, the protagonists throughout the series to date act out of their desire to love and be loved. While a great schemer can accomplish the goals of their ethical affiliation at the same time, those less 'other' are left choosing between duty and love or survival and love, depending on their light/dark classifications.

Part two continues this theme, centering again around a choice that Anton will have to make regarding Sveta, himself, and a dark other new to town, while making the dark one the center of the narrative. This provides us with a good continuing look at the organization of the Day Watch and how it mirrors the Night Watch in nearly every way. There is a chess metaphor running quietly through the book, and while not used (it would have been ham handed to say it) it's obvious in the mirrored structures of the watches, and the way that they act regarding their opponents.

Part three highlights this parallel even more, by following Anton and his opposite number as they travel to Prague for the Inquisition's hearing, and listening in as they move through the same questions, thoughts and conjectures from their own sets of data and their own concerns. Their informal meetings highlight their similarities more than they show their differences. We're left with the impression that they would have been right at home with "The Arrangement" come up with by Aziraphale and Crowley in Good Omens, and gone on reporting successes to their superiors while having quiet lunches in beer gardens and comparing notes on the insanity of their bosses orders.

This happens to lead into book three, which will be up later.