I’ve loved Lukyanenko’s Watch series ever since I walked past a movie poster for the Night Watch film in 2004 and just had to stare for a couple of minutes, in awe.  This was neat.  There was a terribly long wait before the book upon which the movie was based was released in the U.S., but when it came out, it was worth it.  The sequel, Day Watch, was almost as good.

Twilight Watch and Last Watch followed.  They weren’t as good as the first two, but worth reading. Unfortunately, the downward trend has continued with New Watch.

It is far from a bad book.  It’s definitely worth your time, but only if you really liked the earlier volumes in the series.  The main problem was that I felt New Watch was written just to continue the series, not tell a compelling story.

Filtered through the lens of the supernatural, there are the usual fascinating descriptions of contemporary Russian culture and meditations on its past: things we’ve come to expect from the Watch series.  Discussions on the ethics of power and the place Others should or shouldn’t have in human society?  They’re there, too.  But by now, the author’s gone to the well a little too often on the philosophical issues, and the water’s getting muddy.

Some characters return, like Olga, Semyon, and Gesar, but they lack the bite they had from the previous novels.  They’re mostly window dressing.  A new character, a human policeman (polizei) is introduced, but Lukyanenko doesn’t do a lot with him.  Throughout, the only two characters of real importance are Anton the protagonist and Arina the sometimes antagonist.  There is a third character, the Tiger, but I can’t describe him/her without giving anything important away, so I won’t.

Concepts like the nature of the Twilight and the purpose of Prophets are discussed, but the explanations behind them seem too forced, too superficial.  They needed fleshing out.  Anton has to go overseas in order to learn basic, fundamental things that the Russian Others should have known all along.  An infidelity subplot is hinted at, but goes nowhere and leaves one wondering why it was introduced.

There are flashes of brilliance here and there, like Anton’s precognitive flash and some neat magic tricks, but they’re overwhelmed by an underwhelming ending that hinges on two unfortunate elements: a plot device brought in on the last couple of pages, and a handshake agreement that makes little sense.

Did you like the other books in the series?  Then buy this one.  Just don’t get your hopes up.

Three stars out of five.

I’m changing the blog a little bit.  I can do that, because currently nobody reads it except for a few nice people, and believe me, I appreciate every time you visit.

Anyway, I’m not going to write about writing, so much.  Or about my marketing efforts.  That’s stuff that only writers want to know about, and my intent here is to garner a broader audience.  Honestly, does anybody give a rat’s peepee about my combing through The Indie View for reviewers?  No.  Of course not.  Hell, I don’t want to read about it, and I’ve written several posts about it already.

I like writing about personal defense issues, of which I know a lot.  And the supernatural.  And horror.  And other topics of interest that won’t put you to sleep.

Since 2003, I administrated a current events and politics blog with several writers of varying viewpoints.  Very recently, I closed it.  So I know what it’s like to put words into the ether.

Your visits are always welcome, and your comments treasured.  I look forward to hearing from you.

I love bread.  I always have.  Growing up in Philadelphia, there were always good delicatessens around that served not only delicious cold cuts, but rye bread: the kind with the really soft inside and chewy crust. You can keep the caraway seeds.   Tastykakes (a Pennsylvania-based company that makes Hostess-style cakes) were good, cheesesteaks an occasional welcome indulgence (I always preferred a pizza steak to a cheesesteak because processed yellow cheese food is disgusting), but a slice of rye bread, plain, was a real treat.  No butter, because why ruin a perfectly good piece of bread?

Bread is magic.  To paraphrase Peter Reinhart, a master baker, it’s the story of life and death and resurrection.  The live wheat is killed in harvest, and then it lives again with the use of yeast in dough, and then it’s killed once more in the oven.  It’s a symbol of civilization.

So, over the course of decades, I made my own breads, with varying degrees of success.  I went through bread machines and recipes, trying to achieve artisan-style bread: the kind with the large, irregular holes.  It was a hobby that I’d picked up and dropped in cycles until late 2010, when my wife bought me a copy of Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day.

It was a truly transformative book, and not only taught me how to make that elusive bread with the big holes, but also spurred me on to learn more about bread baking in general.  It also encouraged me to start a blog called Adventures in Leavening.  It documented my early successes and techniques.  I still refer to it from time to time, but I haven’t updated it in years.

I have a toddler son, so I can no longer pursue hobbies the way I once did.  When he’s a little older, he and I will go into the kitchen and make things like yeast doughnuts and breads and such.  We’ll see if he catches the bread spark, so to speak.  It’s likely he will: when I can, I make us ciabatta bread as a treat, and pizza on the weekends.  But for now, my time is not all my own.  My little boy is only going to be this young once, and he’s a great guy to hang out with.

But I will get back to more baking some day.  I’ve got gluten in my blood.