“Day Watch” by Sergei Lukyanenko

I liked this one too, though probably less than “Night Watch.”

The whole premise of the main character here worked for me: starting from a weaker position, slowly gaining power, learning more about the hidden world, and getting pulled deeper into all the Watch politics. I like this kind of gradual power increase when it is done well. Not instant superhero nonsense, but step by step, with rules, consequences, and people much stronger than you standing nearby being annoying and mysterious.

That said, I was hoping to enjoy the Day Watch perspective more than I did.

Looking through the eyes of the “evil” side should have been very fun. In theory, this is exactly my thing: show me how the bad guys justify themselves, show me their internal logic, show me how the same world looks from the other side. And the book does some of that, sure. But I did not get quite enough satisfaction from it.

Maybe that is on purpose. The whole series seems to be moving toward the idea that Light and Dark are not simply good and evil factions. I think the third book pushes this even further and starts removing that clean line between them. So maybe “Day Watch” is not supposed to make the Dark side “cool,” but to make the whole system feel more suspicious.

Still, I wanted a bit more.

The book is entertaining, though. The pacing is good, the lore is still fun, and I can absolutely see why people love the Watches. There is something very addictive about this world: magical bureaucracy, moral ambiguity, old powers playing games, and regular post-Soviet life sitting right underneath all of it.

So yeah. Good read. Not as magical for me as the first book, but still enjoyable enough that I definitely want to keep going.