You Have Entered ... the Twilight Zone

The Twilight Watch

Sergei Lukyanenko

Anchor Canada

Sigh. Have you ever read a book that you just didn't want to end? So much so that you procrastinated finishing the novel because you weren't ready to say goodbye to either the characters or the world in which they live? Yeah -- so that's the story as to why I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks -- I've been in mourning for Anton and the rest of his crazy gang.

In terms of pure storytelling, I thought this installment was the most engaging of the three novels in Lukyanenko's series. While it was also broken into three separate "tales", this novel seemed less jumpy than the other two and it felt more like I was reading a complete narrative. Despite the fact that Anton was the protagonist in each of the stories, other characters in the text were more fully developed and I felt that by the end of the trilogy Lukyanenko had truly developed an alternate reality with all the working parts.

I have to admit to also being intrigued by the author's use of allegory. He says a lot about geopolitics, humanism, Russian culture, archetypes, etc, and in some ways, the complexity of his text reminds me of Spenser's Faerie Queene or Dante's Inferno. You know ... those really long poems that you refused to read in high school. Three point five Redcrosse Knights out of five.