I haven’t read much science fiction these past few weeks…I mainly am doing a re-read of Night Watch by Sergi Lukyanenko, which is an urban fantasy set in Russia.

When the Ukraine war started, I was vastly disappointed that the author of this series supports Russia against Ukraine, so I didn’t do a re-read for several years due to that.

But recently, I’m curious about his viewpoint of the world–so on the reread I’ve been looking closer, and I’m starting to understand his stances were there in his work all along, even accounting for the translation from Russian into English.

His series is about Light Others vs. Dark Others, and how they’ve come together to make a truce, and there’s a lot of rather cynical acceptance of corruption and good deeds doing harm so it’s better sometimes to do nothing which stands out to me now that I’m older and can digest the themes of the book better.

Craft-wise, he’s a very good author, there are things that come through that go beyond language (the way characters talk to one another, the way scenes and plots are set up) so as a writer myself I’m taking note of the tricks I might snatch and use myself. But I’ve been very thoughtful about culture and ethics and morals and how everyone likes to think they’re on the right side of things.