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The Day Watch
The Day Watch
Jul 20, 2025 9:41 AM

Author:Sergei Lukyanenko,Vladimir Vasiliev

The Day Watch

Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are The Others. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists in parallel to our own, each owes allegiance either to The Dark or The Light.

In The Day Watch, second book of the Night Watch trilogy, Alice, a young but powerful Dark Other, attends a planning meeting with her comrades in the Day Watch. The team is on a mission to apprehend an uninitiated Other, a practicing Dark witch who has so far eluded the bureaux responsible for finding and initiating unlicensed practitioners of magic. It seems a routine operation. But when they arrive, the Night Watch team has already made the arrest. A fierce battle ensues, during which Alice almost dies. Drained of her powers, she is sent to recuperate at a youth camp near the Black Sea. There she meets Igor; the chemistry between them is instant and irresistible.

But then comes a shattering realisation: Igor is a Light Mage. Suddenly Alice remembers him as one of those involved in the battle that left her crippled. Now that they know, there is no alternative to a magical duel, a battle that neither of them wants to win...

Reviews

Praise for The Night Watch:
This modern day mythical fantasy is Anne Rice on an epic scale, a hugely imagined world. A chiller thriller from cold of Russia, this one's been selling like hot cakes around the world.

—— Sunday Sport

So good that the film feels like a trailer for it

—— Time Out

JK Rowling, Russian style... Arguably Russia's richest and most famous literary talent of the moment. [a] cracking read, owing more to Rowling or Philip Pullman than it does to the horror genre... Surprisingly readable and addictive... It relies on suspense and psychological drama and a good dose of humour - rather than blood and guts.

—— Daily Telegraph

When a particular kind of story, heavily based in one culture, gets transferred into a culture distinctly different, something magical happens. Something modern, new and distinctly creepy... The magic is rooted in the realities of modern Russia. Inventive, sardonic, and imbued with a surprising the sense that, for this author and his audience, much of this stuff is new-minted.

—— Independent

Jekyll and Hyde, in particular, is such an important novel in terms of suspense and setting a perfect scene for crime

—— Alanna Knight

Writers I love: Ellroy, Larry Block, Robert Louis Stevenson, Muriel Spark, Anthony Burgess, Chandler... '[Edinburgh] was the city of Jekyll & Hyde, where the template for that story was a real-life Edinburgh character named Deacon William Brodie, who was a gentleman by day and a burglar and murderer by night. He gave Stevenson his story

—— Ian Rankin

Another genius Scottish take on the theme of split personalities. Needs no further introduction

—— Maggie O’Farrell

First-rate! What an artist and what a psychologist

—— Gustave Flaubert

Readers who wonder why... Martin Amis and... Kiran Desai seem to flinch from writing about their own times should study Ms Seiffert

—— Economist

Rachel Seiffert is the poet and spokeswoman of those who find themselves on the wrong side of history...powerful, almost unbearably intense and wonderfully written

—— The Times

A quietly ambitious book

—— Guardian

Despite the halting, low-key narration as Joe and Alice attempt to piece together the terms of their engagement, a simmering tension builds, though Seiffert is admirably less concerned with the revelation of atrocities than in how the soldier, having breached the first commandment, negotiates a return to ordinary life

—— Observer

A beautiful book and it's beautifully written

—— Kit de Waal , Good Housekeeping UK

My favourite book of all time

—— Sareeta Domingo , Good Housekeeping

Morrison's stunning trilogy is an evocation of black life over the past four centuries. It defies summary. Completed almost 25 years ago, these novels top anything produced by any American writer including Hemingway, Updike and DeLillo

—— Trevor Phillips , Sunday Times

[A] beautiful, haunting novel

—— Stig Abell , Sunday Times

More than one of Morrison's books could be classed as masterpieces, but this one is famous for a reason: everyone should read it

—— Bernice McFadden, author of SUGAR , Guardian

A magnificent achievement...an American masterpiece

—— A.S. Byatt , Guardian

A triumph

—— Margaret Atwood , New York Times Book Review

She melds horror and beauty in a story that will disturb the mind forever

—— Sunday Times

Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature

—— New York Review of Books

A work of genuine force. . .Beautifully written

—— Washington Post

There is something great in Beloved: a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding true. It gets you

—— The New Yorker

Superb. . .A profound and shattering story that carries the weight of history. . .Exquisitely told

—— Cosmopolitan

This is a wonderful novel about slavery, freedom, parental loss and revenants

—— The Week, Thomas Keneally
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