The Twilight Watch

By Sergei Lukyanenko

Among us live a species of super humans called the Others. These humans can enter a realm called the Twilight, a shadow world that exists parallel to our world and they use the unnatural powers from it. While they are in the Twilight, Others are drained of their life essence and may be consumed by the Twilight if they remain inside for a long period of time.

Others have two main groups, the Light Others and the Dark Others.

Ages ago, both sides fought against each other in an eternal war which neither side could win, so, both sides signed the Great Treaty which would then govern them and dictate the balance between powers.

Thus the Night Watch and the Light Watch were born, two patrol guards that are meant to keep each side of Others at bay to ensure neither side would break the Treaty.

Both sides answer to the Inquisition, a neutral entity consisting of members from the Dark Others and the Light Others that ensures neither side disturbs the natural equilibrium between the Light and the Dark.

Having said that...

Nobody's Power

This "chapter" is the culmination of the book.

After a long chase for an ancient book that has the legendary ability to heighten the power of any human in the world, Anton Gorodetsky (the whole saga's protagonist) is faced with the arduos task of putting and end to Kostya Saushkin, a Dark Other vampire.

His ultimate goal is to travel to the International Space Station and read the book while looking at the Earth from orbit (the spell of Fuaran works on everyone in the caster's range of sight), turning all humans into Others, so at last he will not be different from the rest.

What he fails to understand is how the nature of the Others and their relationship with the Earth works. Most Others do not realize that it's humans who emit the magical energy from which they obtain their powers and which feeds the Twilight as well.

The Others absorb more magic than what they emit and their magic level depends on the absorb/emit ratio. If Kostya manages to turn all humans into Others, the amount of magic energy available will drastically decrease.

After Anton catches up with Kostya, him and his superiors (The Light Other and the Dark Other's leaders) realize that Kostya is not planning to steal a rocket and is instead planning to open a portal to the space station. So in order to stop him, Anton was given the power of all available sources on Earth to power him up and be able to cast a maximum power spell, but even after being instructed via mind link to destroy Kostya, Anton realized the previously mentioned relationship between humans and Others, and so, using all the power lent to him, he casted a protective shield, a shiled which not even Kostya could penetrate with his mind.

What Anton did not want the vampire to realize was that since he was an Other he would not be able to perform any magic in the vast emptiness of space. There would be no energy there from which he could draw on, in space he was separated from the source of all Others' energy. Kostya, surprised by Anton's decission, opened the portal thinking he had won and Anton was just a coward.

Anton knew it takes thousands of calculations to put a rocket into orbit, Kostya could not possibly calculate the exact position of the station, thus, leaving him to float in his spacesuit, unable to perform any magic, unable to make a corrective teleport into the space station nor open a portal back to Earth.

He could only remain in orbit floating endlessly, burning up once he re entered the atmosphere, along with the book.

I choose this book because it's one of my favourite saga of all times and in this third installment my favourite character is the main antagonist; he sets basically the whole book in motion.

It really develops the character further from what we were shown in the first 2 books and the ending is interesting in that it allows further development into the next books without it feeling forced or too "deux ex machina" in my opinion.

I particularly chose the ending chapter because not many authors successfully narrate a peaceful and clever climax, we are used to having epic battles between evil and good and we always expect our action driven craving to be pleased.

However, the conclusion on this epic chase culminates in a clever realization by the protsgonist as he steps back, letting the villain practically defeat himself and let his ego get the best of him. The fact that the final resource our hero has is a defensive spell rather than any destructive offense speaks loudly of his intelligence and deductive abilities and personally that is a trait I like the most in people so maybe that's also why I love the ending.

I consider that this chapter allows for anyone to understand and comprehend how sometimes all we gotta do is step back and let "kharma" do everything for us, as much as we would like to take it upon ourselves to seek justice, sometimes, life alone let's the most arrogant creatures drown themselves in their own poison.