Customer Reviews

Night Watch

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A post-magical apocalypse political thriller and story about succession and inheritance in several senses.

Stewart writes beautifully and creates original, well-detailed worlds. There were two aspects of this book that didn't work so well for me: first, the political thriller plot became incoherent, and second, the Chinatown culture seemed stereotypical (martial arts, empty cups of tea, whatever). On the other hand, I loved his evocation of the North Coast forest, and the way the elegance of his descriptions is grounded by down-to-earth characters and moments of humor.

I'd recommend this, but not as strongly as GALVESTON or CLOUDS END.

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One thing I've noticed is that Stewart's fiction tends to polarize readers. People either get annoyed with the story and walk away rolling their eyes, or they get very excited about what Stewart accomplishes with his prose, his characters, his distinctive humor, his understanding of life.

I certainly fall into the latter category. Night Watch appealed to me immediately with its enchanting jumble of science fiction and fantasy, and quickly pulled me in deeper with its lyricism and the solid reality of its characters.

To benefit most from The Night Watch, you must be attentive. And patient. If you mainly gravitate toward shoot-em-up action or heart-pounding romance, The Night Watch might not be for you. It has action, true, but actions always have consequences, and Stewart forces us to see that. It deals with romantic relationships, as well, but not the kind of formula romance that goes down like emotional cotton candy. Stewart deals with love: hard, real, something that is a choice, something that takes a lot of hard work to preserve. This is not a book that merely reflects the influence of other books. It's a book that reflects life.

Who will like The Night Watch? I have no idea how to predict. It took me entirely by surprise to read some of the reviews on this page and see that the very things I loved about this novel were things that annoyed or bored other readers. Maybe the lyrical writing will seem dull to you; maybe the story's firm grounding in physical location will seem tiresome; maybe the characters' hard choices, their struggles to figure out life, won't be exciting enough.

But if you want a book that looks hard at the real issues of life, unflinching and wryly humorous, The Night Watch could be just what you're looking for.

Set in the world of Resurrection Man, this novel continues to exhibit Stewart's powerful narrative and characterization gifts. I was riveted-- other reviewers below seem not to have been enchanted as I was, but I think they've cheated themselves of a deep and meaningful experience. Stewart, like Tim Powers, has a deft touch with fantasy, and creates a persuasive and comprehensible fantasy world that he peoples with "real" protagonists. I've loaned this book to others, and do not hesitate to recommend it to mature readers with a taste for subtle fantasy.

I have read several of Stewart's book, but this is my favorite--so far. His imagination always amazes me; he animates and describes the world in a way that renders it both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. We know the world in which he is writing, but it is also made to feel foreign and new to the reader. An example is his description of a forest which controls its own pathways. The path itself he animates and has it galloping along in front of his characters.

This book is filled with nuggets of insight, not only into the world around us but into people, their beliefs, and their desires. He takes time to show how his characters live, eat, sleep, etc. even while they are in the midst of a trying, wildly changing environment. It is this patience mixed with his well-developed fantastical/sci-fi world, along with his seamless writing, that make this novel exceptional.

I would recommend it to people who are not used to reading science fiction or fantasy because it crosses all genre boundaries, mixing the two genres above along with realistic fiction issues and mythological ideas.

I have loved Sean Stewart's writing ever since I picked up _Passion Play_ on a whim because the store I was in happened to have an autographed copy.

Wow.

_The Night Watch_ is beautifully, delicately written: it's a novel that I found to be compulsively readable, not only because of the interesting concepts set forth in it, but also because of the laugh-out-loud humor I occasionally found, the plotline as a whole.

Stewart is never predictable: he always finds a twist, so that even when his stories seme to follow the usual route, they always take a turn so not everything turns out as you expect.

_The Night Watch_'s blending of modern and ancient, politics and interesting characters make it a book that is worth reading even if you have not read _Resurrection Man_, in whose world it is placed. In fact. I did not even realize it was written in the same world as another book until I read the advertisements at the end of the paperback!

Recommended, if you like interesting political interplay, and enjoy the sheer beauty of words spread across the page by a master.

Most "genre" fiction is pretty limited in the sense of literary style. Let's face it, your average science fiction/fantasy/horror/thriller novel may be entertaining, even meaningful, but rarely stands out as a craft of language and structure.

In "The Night Watch" I was pleased to find both a good story and an excellent example of literary craft. Some passages of the novel read like poetry, with a cadence and a cunning use of language that somehow moves the story along at the same time as it makes the reader pause and admire.

Chapter 12 was one part in particular, in which the bodyguard Jen is practicing his martial arts moves to distract himself and trying not to attract the attention of a local demon, and as he goes through his moves he remembers his past. The end of this chapter is both beautiful and deeply disturbing. This chapter by itself makes the book worth reading, to me. It is one of the best examples of Stewart's excellent use of language, but there are many others throughout the book.

I loved seeing how magic and technology were incorporated in the book, and how they sort of became one and the same in some instances. It reminded me of Tim Hunter's experience in the far future of Neil Gaiman's original "Books of Magic" miniseries, in which magic and technology have become so intertwined as to become indistinguishable. I remember something along the lines of "computers made up of a net of spells." Think also of Arthur C. Clarke's line: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Sean's idea of combining the two may not be completely new, but he carries it off very well. Better than most, I would say.

For its craft and its excellent story, "The Night Watch" is well worth finding and reading, and Sean Stewart is certainly a writer to be watched.

Sean Steart's "Night Watch" is a wonderful blend of old world oriental mythology, new world scepticism, and cybertechnology struggling to gain a toehold in a world gone haywire. The characterization is the key in this book; no one is so good they're beyond belief, and no one is so bad that you can't feel for their plight. I wish for more from this enigmatic world of Mr. Stewart's.

This book shows the depth of Sean Stewart's writing -- the Chinatown sections in particular are as delicate as blown glass. Stunning. This is a book full of vision and ideas supported by a brilliant writing style. However, ultimately, the technical beauty of this didn't overcome, for me, an unfocused story ... I didn't feel there was a satisfying climax, though the book still remains, in parts, some of the best work I've ever read. When Sean Stewart hits his stride by locking down an absolutely coherent story, he'll be unstoppable.

This is really just an average book by an average author. Stewart's writing is adequate, but it lacks a certain artistry. He has a tendency to overindulge himself in his descriptions, which occasionally caused me to roll my eyes as I was reading. One of my pet peeves is when an author goes into great detail describing what some character is wearing -- the color, what type of fabric, the jewelry and what it's made of, etc. FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, I DON'T CARE WHAT THIS PERSON IS WEARING, GET ON WITH THE STORY. Stewart's attempts at humor, usually spoken through his character's mouths, left me flat -- I never even cracked a smile.

At one point, Stewart describes a man trying to save himself from freezing to death in the bitter cold. The whole scene is terribly overdone, with Stewart time and again describing the poor sap warming his hands between his legs and stomping his feet to keep from freezing. At more than one point the author reminds us that "it certainly was very cold." Yeesh.

It wasn't until I approached the end of the book, that I really realized it wasn't going to come together into something satisfying. In the end, there were so many major characters in this book that I ended up not caring about any of them. The denoument, which comes some 30 pages from the end, is almost inexplicable and sucks the life out of the final pages. This isn't a terrible book, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

I like Sean Stewart (disclosure) but think that Perfect Circle and Mockingbird are his best works. This is quite different from those books, but still and interesting read. Perhaps this is more comparable to Galveston.

This is not a "big world" book. It focuses on two cities in a future where magic has become strong (but is beginning to ebb again) and the two different cultures these cities have and the differences between them.

It has some very clever magic. Forests that are conscious and protect some of the characters and dead armies that lightly interact with the living.

Ultimately, it is a little flat in character development, but an interesting read.