I really wanted to finish this before 2008 ended, but travel, a hectic schedule and a new mini-PC conspired against me. Ah well, such is life.This world is one that is riddled with possibilities. Even though Lukyanenko has been pretty single-minded in his themes throughout the trilogy, there's ...
2014: *** The reasons why I will never read another one of Lukyanenko's books are at the bottom of this review *** ----------2013: Unless you happen to be a chessmaster in the neverending chess game of life, you are nothing but a pawn to be sacrificed when the strategy demands it. "The game i...
„There are far more reasons for death than there are for life.” After a bit bleak third book from the series, Watch is back on top. It may not be better than Night Watch, but it's definitely my favorite in the series. The saga is still one big festival of misogyny, but at least it's extraordinar...
We had flown in from Paris that morning, and then I had taken Egor to the Economic Achievements Exhibition district, where his mother still lived. Only then did I go home and grab barely two hours’ sleep. There was something heroic about it. As there was in the impervious, restrained expression o...
An honest Fourth-Level, with every chance of advancing further. His name was Alexander – or Sasha – and only recently he had been studying at the Moscow Aviation Institute and dreaming of becoming a space-flight engineer. People like that only became Light Ones, because in 2012 in Russia only a c...
This happens sometimes. I cross "Labyrinth"'s levels almost without hiding, shooting the monsters and passing the other players. The players try to avoid me too. Except those who feel offended since yesterday or consider themselves heroes. Those I k...
Yari Kuusinen and Raivo Nikkilya squeezed into the backseat of the old Zhiguli without speaking as Yukha took the seat in front. “Take us to She-re-me-tie-vo,” he said, speaking with emphatic clarity. Strangely enough, Russian had been the language of Mustajoki’s childhood...
It was quiet all around, that living silence you get in the country, with the rustle of the morning wind after it's finally turned cool. Only that didn't make me feel any better. The bed was soaking wet with sweat and my head was splitting. Semyon was snoring monotonously on the bed beside me – t...
But I didn't dare get into the driving seat to check how the diesel engine had survived its long ordeal at the hands of the farm mechanics. I walked quietly through into the house and listened – my mother-in-law was already asleep in her room, but there was the faint glow of a night light in ours...