Anton is an analyst with the Night Watch, an organization of Others who have sworn never to use their powers for personal gain. A desk jockey with modest magical abilities, Anton possesses enough skill to restore a recently broken cup to wholeness, heal a minor scratch or even "remoralize" a crook by gently nudging him in less sleazy career directions. Like all Others, Anton was recruited when his powers first emerged and given the opportunity to ally himself with Day Watch, the more self-interested cadre of sorcerers. To avoid a devastating war, these two sides seek to balance each other out. Under the terms of their agreement, a good deed on any Night Watch agent's part allows the Day Watch to perform a comparable act of evil. Similarly, every wicked action can be redeemed by a healing, or some other act of magical kindness, on the part of the Night Watch.

After three years of happily working behind a desk, Anton finds himself abruptly assigned to the field, sent to capture a vampire that has been killing indiscriminately in defiance of the Treaty. As he searches the city, hoping to pick up the creature's trail, he comes upon something more dangerous: an innocent young woman bearing the mark of a lethal curse. The curse is so strong that not only is her death imminent, but in all likelihood hundreds—maybe even thousands—of Muscovites will be killed when it comes to fruition.

Out of his depth and suspicious that the vampire's killing spree and the curse may be related, Anton must rely on his unreliable and Machiavellian supervisor, Boris, if he is to have any hope of saving either the woman or the vampire's next victim.

Mystics playing cloak and dagger

Translated into English for the first time by Andrew Bromfield, Nightwatch is the first installment of a wildly popular Russian horror trilogy (follow-up novels Day Watch and Dusk Watch will be out in 2007, and the 2004 film has been getting good reviews in its recent North American release). Its appeal is easy to see: Lukyanenko's Moscow is an exotic and dangerous place, peopled by licensed vampires, magicians who aren't allowed to use magic, and shapeshifters who must answer telephones for a living. Through it all, the driving force of this narrative is romantic love. Anton falls for the cursed young woman, Sveta, while his partner has been turned into an owl as a means of separating her from her lover. This pair of troubled relationships is at the crux of the story, even as the magical rivalry between Watches threatens the entire human race.

Tangled romances aside, the charm of this novel lies in its bleak humor and darkly absurdist overtones. Good and Evil are both personified by faceless bureaucracies, and the allegedly altruistic Night Watch stands by as innocent people are killed, even occasionally putting them in harm's way. In contrast, the Day Watch espouses a cheery laissez-faire attitude toward the carnage, claiming to be a simple champion of personal freedom. Is either side truly good ... or bad? The question, at least in this first novel, is open-ended.

Like most books whose plots emphasize intrigue and political gamesmanship, Night Watch is at times hard to follow. The twists of its story are extremely self-referential, and more than once its villains must explain their actions to the audience—and to confused, world-weary Anton—at great length before everything makes sense. Because its mythology is so original, there is little one can take for granted; even alleged basics like how to kill a vampire are different.

As a result, Night Watch cannot be considered light reading: It requires close attention. Luckily, though, Lukyanenko has created a tale that is so absorbing, passionate and original that this effort pays off in full.