{"id":547,"date":"2009-03-13T14:55:18","date_gmt":"2009-03-13T22:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefoff.com\/?p=547"},"modified":"2019-12-01T14:44:26","modified_gmt":"2019-12-01T22:44:26","slug":"last-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/?p=547","title":{"rendered":"Last Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just finished this fourth volume in the Night Watch series. I posted it at goodreads.com and am copying that post here:<\/p>\n

Last Watch<\/em> would be fairly confusing to anyone who hadn’t read Night Watch<\/em>, Day Watch<\/em>, and Twilight Watch<\/em>. Even though I’ve read and enjoyed the whole series, I had some trouble remembering who was who among the minor characters; details of what happened in the earlier books, often mentioned in this one, were also a bit fuzzy. Still, I enjoyed this a lot. The protagonist, Higher Light One Anton Gorodetsky, remains a fresh, wry, and occasionally surprising voice, and the intersections of the magical and real worlds continue to be weird, clever, and often violent or amusing. I found this story sketchier but also more poignant than the earlier episodes in Anton’s career; there are echoes of Arthurian (or Merlinian) legend and The Tempest<\/em> woven throughout. Overall, not as strong as the first two entries in the series, when Lukyanenko’s world-building was new and startling, but satisyfing.<\/p>\n

To those who know the Night Watch series only through Timur Bekmambetov’s sensational films, the original story line of the books is different from that of the movies and is worth exploring. But the films are dazzling, and I adore them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fantasy vs. SF? <\/strong>Near the end of Last Watch<\/em>, in a conversation between two of nonhuman characters about the future of the world, Lukyanenko–who has published lots of both sf and fantasy–tosses off a few observations about the two genres. One character speculates about the appeal of fantasy worlds, magic, etc. to human readers. It’s a brief interchange, not a dissertation, but readers and writers of both genres may find it entertaining. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just finished this fourth volume in the Night Watch series. I posted it at goodreads.com and am copying that post here: Last Watch would be fairly confusing to anyone who hadn’t read Night Watch, Day Watch, and Twilight Watch. Even though I’ve read and enjoyed the whole series, I had some trouble remembering who was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,6,12],"tags":[49,42,45],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-reading","category-specfic","tag-movies","tag-reading","tag-specfic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}