Lukyanenko was a child psychiatrist in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Alma-Ata, until near non-existent wages forced him out. Fortunately, his excellent writing was just starting to pay off, and he has become the pre-eminent speculative fiction writer currently active in the Russian language. His ‘Night Watch’ series of portmanteau books about the magical cold war running behind modern society has been hugely successful domestically, and is now available in English and several other languages.
The premise behind “Night Watch” is that our world is inhabited by Others, supernaturally gifted people and other beings, mostly living amongst us as human. Every other belongs either to the Light or the Dark, a choice that cannot be revoked once made. The two sides have fought for millennia, but have come to a historic accord – rather than utterly destroy each other, they maintain an uneasy peace, each letting the other side indulge in a certain amount of activity unopposed.
Series protagonist Anton is a mage and a member of the Night Watch, working on the side of the pro-human Light to monitor and regulate the forces of the Dark. Anton sits uneasily in the Light, but it’s an either-or choice, and the Dark are predatory, callous and prone to breaking the rules. A new, untrained Grand Sorceress is just starting to discover her talent, and the magical repercussions threaten all of Moscow. Meanwhile, a significant intrigue is starting to unfold around a young boy whose fate, uniquely, is entirely in his own hands – he may have the power to tip the balance one way or the other. An interesting premise and fast-paced action are blended well with a starkly realistic look at modern Moscow, and there’s a strong streak of darkly fatalistic humour. There’s also a hell of a lot of moral ambiguity — despite the set-up, there’s no nice, easy heroes and villains in this world.
The ‘Night Watch’ book was also turned into a pair of movies, Night Watch and Day Watch. They’re fun, and capture Moscow beautifully, but they’re not as engaging as the book. Lukyanenko has also done a number of sequels to his original book — Day Watch (yes, I know, but it’s not my fault), Twilight Watch and The Last Watch. They retain the trifurcated but thematically linked structure of the first book, although The Last Watch is closer to being a regular novel. They’re well worth getting hold of.
Night Watch has now become one of my absolute favourite books. The other books in the series are also good, but it was almost like he didn’t have the energy to weave such intricate and complicated intrigues as he did in Night Watch. The whole series is definitely worth a read though.
And a small note *just to be picky* – You said that once the choice between the Light and the Dark has been made it can’t be revoked, but it is mentioned in Twilight Watch that it is possible for an Other to change sides, it’s just very rare.