Review - The Twilight Watch
I've really liked Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch trilogy, but this third book also really irritated me in a couple of ways. I like the way this has all developed -- that the reader's understanding has developed with that of Anton, and that each of the parts are relevant while still being stories unto themselves. I enjoyed that characters who were mentioned earlier, like Edgar and Kostya, become more important as you learn more about the world.
But the "plot twists" are really starting to annoy me. Just once, can it not be Gesar's plot (the Mirror story doesn't count, because it wasn't anyone's plot)? Actually, that's one of the things that really bothers me. For all that we get in the last couple of stories, as we learn more, about the Others all basically being the same and equilibrium being important and so on, and there always being two halves to the truth and blahblahblah, Lukyanenko always basically has the Light Ones coming out on top. I mean, they get Svetlana, they get a second chance at Egor, Anton powers up, they get Anton and Svetlana's daughter, their Messiah figure, they end the trilogy with four Great Magicians, Igor wins the duel with Alisa... The only thing the Dark Ones get is the Mirror, and that's just to equalise the two -- it doesn't let the Dark Others get ahead in any way.
That encapsulates another of the things that annoyed me: Anton's rise in power. At the beginning he's sort of mediocre -- not insignificant, but not the greatest. Yet throughout the story he gets levelled up and levelled up... against the actual rules of the world as we know them originally... for no real reason. It's not plot necessary. He could do everything he needs to do with amulets or by channeling the other Others' power, but no... I'm glad, in one sense, that it means no barrier between him and Svetlana, because Svetlana's a nice character. And the whole problem with them not being equal is kind of understandable, but the problem with Anton is that he's quite a self-centered dick. I didn't mind his initial small rises, so that he remained one of the best characters to see things from and didn't become insignificant, but the fact that he became a magician beyond classification seemed needless.
Which leads me to the way I hated the treatment of Kostya. Apart from the poetic muses in the end about him flying, well, the message is "don't try to prove you're better than people think you are, they'll ignore you and it leads to trouble". Awesome, just awesome. I also found the ending a little confusing, and wasn't sure exactly what Kostya got wrong... In any case, again, Anton being an asshole -- he should have destroyed Kostya rather than let him go to a prolonged, painful death. What a jerk.
Another thing that I found irritating was the disappearance of Olga from the text. In the first book she's an important character, a strong woman, etc. Yet as soon as she becomes Gesar's lover again, she's mentioned a couple of times and the only time I remember hear appearing is to serve Czech beer to Anton! Besides that, she makes a stupid rookie mistake out of essentially female sentimentality and everyone else has to clean up after her! That doesn't sound like the original Olga. And it's weird, because there are strong women in the story -- Olga, Svetlana, Tiger Cub, Arina, even Alisa... But by the end, for various plot reasons, we basically only see Svetlana and know that Olga is supposed to be around there somewhere...
I'm looking forward to reading The Last Watch and seeing what it does with what's there, but the ending of the third book feels quite satisfying -- in the sense that it's conclusive enough -- and I'm not sure what to expect from The Last Watch. It'd have to be pretty damn apocalyptic to build on what's already happened.
But the "plot twists" are really starting to annoy me. Just once, can it not be Gesar's plot (the Mirror story doesn't count, because it wasn't anyone's plot)? Actually, that's one of the things that really bothers me. For all that we get in the last couple of stories, as we learn more, about the Others all basically being the same and equilibrium being important and so on, and there always being two halves to the truth and blahblahblah, Lukyanenko always basically has the Light Ones coming out on top. I mean, they get Svetlana, they get a second chance at Egor, Anton powers up, they get Anton and Svetlana's daughter, their Messiah figure, they end the trilogy with four Great Magicians, Igor wins the duel with Alisa... The only thing the Dark Ones get is the Mirror, and that's just to equalise the two -- it doesn't let the Dark Others get ahead in any way.
That encapsulates another of the things that annoyed me: Anton's rise in power. At the beginning he's sort of mediocre -- not insignificant, but not the greatest. Yet throughout the story he gets levelled up and levelled up... against the actual rules of the world as we know them originally... for no real reason. It's not plot necessary. He could do everything he needs to do with amulets or by channeling the other Others' power, but no... I'm glad, in one sense, that it means no barrier between him and Svetlana, because Svetlana's a nice character. And the whole problem with them not being equal is kind of understandable, but the problem with Anton is that he's quite a self-centered dick. I didn't mind his initial small rises, so that he remained one of the best characters to see things from and didn't become insignificant, but the fact that he became a magician beyond classification seemed needless.
Which leads me to the way I hated the treatment of Kostya. Apart from the poetic muses in the end about him flying, well, the message is "don't try to prove you're better than people think you are, they'll ignore you and it leads to trouble". Awesome, just awesome. I also found the ending a little confusing, and wasn't sure exactly what Kostya got wrong... In any case, again, Anton being an asshole -- he should have destroyed Kostya rather than let him go to a prolonged, painful death. What a jerk.
Another thing that I found irritating was the disappearance of Olga from the text. In the first book she's an important character, a strong woman, etc. Yet as soon as she becomes Gesar's lover again, she's mentioned a couple of times and the only time I remember hear appearing is to serve Czech beer to Anton! Besides that, she makes a stupid rookie mistake out of essentially female sentimentality and everyone else has to clean up after her! That doesn't sound like the original Olga. And it's weird, because there are strong women in the story -- Olga, Svetlana, Tiger Cub, Arina, even Alisa... But by the end, for various plot reasons, we basically only see Svetlana and know that Olga is supposed to be around there somewhere...
I'm looking forward to reading The Last Watch and seeing what it does with what's there, but the ending of the third book feels quite satisfying -- in the sense that it's conclusive enough -- and I'm not sure what to expect from The Last Watch. It'd have to be pretty damn apocalyptic to build on what's already happened.