Review - 'The Night Watch' by Sergei Lukyanenko

I won’t be able to help but compare this work to the film at some point in this review, since I saw and enjoyed the films before reading this book, so I may as well start there.

Reading the book has made me respect the film more in some ways. Other than being superbly casted (though perhaps this is also due to me seeing it first), what they did do well with its adaptation was stripping out ‘story two’ and ‘story three’ completely (i.e. parts two and three) and just focusing on the story of Egor and which side he will choose, which is after all the real underlying (and only truly important) plot point of this book. The book also helped me to understand the film a lot more easily once I gave it another watch.

Perhaps the film goes too far by making Egor Anton's son, but it does serve to make the boy's choice to join the dark all the more believable, unlike in the book, where it is just an inherent given that lies within him.

What we lose almost completely with the film, due to its medium, is all of Anton’s ponderings on the morality of the Watches, who is currently playing him for a fool, the nature of light and dark, and his other musings, which is a sore loss indeed, as this novel's greatest strength lies in its characterisation of Anton. We truly end up rationalising every potential action he can take along with Anton himself.

The third part of the book, ‘story three’, I found far too slow moving and laborious, with all of the Night Watch except Gesar on holiday getting drunk and annoying or upsetting one another.

On a speculating on morality and the nature of good and evil, this is a great book. There is more smarts here than with your average urban fantasy novel, and for that it should be commended.

I'll be reading the entire series so check back for reviews on the subsequent books.

7/10

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Review - 'Before They Are Hanged' by Joe Abercrombie

And so The Bloody Nine rages on... I am reading Abercrombie’s wonderful trilogy with quite broad gaps of time in between each book, but as soon as I picked up the second book in the trilogy, Before They Are Hanged, the addictive tales of Ninefingers, Glokta, West and all the others came flooding back to me in pleasant cascade.

It is hard to write a review of this book without giving away any plot points to those who haven’t yet read The Blade Itself, so a different approach shall be adopted: asking the simple questions of whether this is a successful continuation of the trilogy and whether it improves upon the first book.

I feel that this novel succeeds in both respects. Firstly, the battles here are larger, more frequent and often grimmer than any we witnessed in the first book. Secondly, for the first time we feel like we’re on a real quest and the plot is actually heading in some tangible direction, as we follow Bayaz’s band of lovable misfits (even if this sense of purpose is snuffed out violently by the ending and we’re left back at square one).

Each of the three main plot threads – Bayaz’s group, West’s plight in the North and Glotka’s mission to defend the city of Dagoska – (and the continual and skillful switching of point of view to various different characters within) I found all very compelling; to the point where I couldn’t decide which story I most wanted to jump back to at the close of each chapter.

The most powerful quality of Abercrombie’s writing is certainly his characterisation; from the Dogman to Jezal, there are a host of characters here that you can’t help but become strongly attached to as you watch them grow into better people and often stronger warriors.

Whilst I found The Blade Itself to be a little lacking in parts, this is a much stronger step forward for this trilogy. Based on how this book wraps up and how little is accomplished here when all is said and done, it looks like Abercrombie is saving pretty much everything for the final stretch (Last Argument of Kings). Rather than this book serving us key plot progression, as it seems to me most second books in a trilogy provide (you’re past introductions and not quite ready for the final sprint, so all the effort is put into taking those necessary steps towards the endgame), this is rather progressive only in the sense of characterisation – but it’s so good that this isn't a bad thing at all.

8/10

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Review - 'Kraken' by China Miéville

First off, it should be known that my biggest fear is the sea; specifically its dark depths and the creatures that lurk within. Like with many people I presume, because I fear this so vehemently, I am at the same time incredibly drawn to it and seek it wherever I can in fiction. Take the scene in James Cameron’s The Abyss that sees Ed Harris’ character make his slow descent into an abyssal, pitch black canyon on the floor of the ocean. I can watch the scene with ease, but at the same time it scares me magnificently, and compels me beyond belief.

To highlight the extent of this fear: to be bluntly honest, Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future on the Dreamcast – exploring the endless deep, shooting through pitch black tunnels, fighting giant sea monsters – scares me so much that I’ve never got past the third level in the 10 or so years that I’ve owned it. But this doesn’t stop me playing it often and loving every minute, all for the intense fear that it evokes.

So the point to be taken is: I love sea monsters. Miéville’s The Scar – an infinitely better book than this one – concerns in large part a gigantic sea monster from another universe called an Avanc; the inclusion and dealing of which I loved (one excellent aspect is Miéville’s choice to never describe the creature in any detail; allowing my imagination to run wild with it – making the fear potential increase enormously). So when I saw that Miéville’s latest work was to be titled Kraken, I immediately built up high hopes.

All in all though, I’m sad to say that I was let down. I love Miéville (and I haven’t even read Perdido Street Station or The City & The City yet), but his latest effort falls considerably short of his abilities in my opinion. New Weird in style Miéville certainly is, but this all too weird for my tastes. From animal servants picketing for their rights to an omniscient invisible flying cartoon pig, this grasps completely in the wrong direction for an altogether ludicrous kind of strange. Add to this a plot full of questions to which we are given all too easy and entirely unsatisfying answers and it doesn’t amount to much.

Unused is the full potential of dealing with a sea monster as utterly terrifying and infamous as the giant squid. I’m sure it isn’t Miéville’s intent to scare here, but I figured I would succumb anyway, due to my phobia, but nothing succeeded in scaring me to any degree, save perhaps the idea of living out Billy’s Kraken dreams.

The whole thing just comes off as one big bad joke; or rather a continual and unrelenting series of bad jokes, punctuated with pointless oddness and unnecessary absurdity. The fact that it could be seen as humour does not excuse the strangeness in my opinion.

There is by no means nothing to salvage. There are points, mostly when Miéville is describing the Gods that exist and the cult religions that follow them, that he hits on some gorgeously Lovecraftian ideas and musings, like with an extract of a ‘holy’ text that Billy (the protagonist) reads:

We cannot see the universe. We are in the darkness of a trench, a deep cut, dark water heavier than earth, presences lit by our own blood, little biolumes, heroic and pathetic Promethei too afraid or weak to steal fire but still able to glow. Gods are among us and they care nothing and are nothing like us.
This is how we are brave: we worship them anyway.

The huge potential of passages like this is never developed further, and all my dreams of being crippled and engulfed by fear are lost with this failing. Kraken is by no means a disaster; it’s just not up to Miéville’s usual high standard, nor as good an execution as I feel the subject matter deserved.

5/10

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