In Soviet Russia Night Watches you!

Bad Joke I know but I just ate and am in my afternoon naptime slump. Thought I'd toss out my quick review for Night Watch - the book not the movie. Well...

It's not bad. Not terrible at least, maybe poorly translated or just poorly written and poorly translated. This ain't Tolstoy or Chekov or Zematyin. If you're unfamiliar with the story here's the run down:

Modern Russia. Supernatural creatures known as Others - i.e. warlocks, witches, vampires, shape shifters, etc. - have been fighting an eternal battle since forever. The powers of Light have the Night Watch to keep an eye on the bad guys. The bad guys a.k.a. the powers of Darkness have the Day Watch to keep an eye on the good guys. Balance of power, blah, blah, blah. I've seen it before, you've seen it before, we've all seen it before. This time it's Russian.

The book starts off strong: snappy writing, grey this, grey that, stuff happens, hoodoo, amulets, fire, shape shifting and assorted cool supernatural happenings. I like Anton - the protagonist - he's a programmer/tech guy for the Night Watch and this is his first heavy duty street mission.
The first third of the book is great fun.

The rest of the book just chugs along. Anton has philosophical crisis, blah, blah, blah, does he buck the system or does he play his role. Is he a good guy? Is he bad? Y'know what - I could care less. I only have about ten pages left and I can't bother to finish it. I don't even care what happens.

Don't bother with the book, just watch the movie. The movie has all the cool stuff in it and while the plot is barely worth paying attention to it does look awesome.

First third of book: B
Rest of the book: D-