Excuse me while I continue to nerd out for another moment; it's like when people try to "talk old", another pet peeve of mine. People throw around the "thees" and "thous" like they're birdseed, thinking they sound educated. The fact is, back when Shakespeare and his ilk were writing, "thee" and "thou" were familiar terms; "you" was actually the more formal term. Moreover, things written or translated before the mid 1700s--and I'm including the King James translation of the Bible in this statement--are chock full of "whither thou art's" and "wherefore art thou's" because, until recently, the English language didn't contain a progressive tense. Meaning, you couldn't say, "where are you going?" It was "whither go thou" or bust. This is the Medievalist in me; I like to think it increases my immunity to bullshit.

Nightwatch is full of bullshit. Of course, this could be due to a terrible translation, but I doubt it. It's full of just the kind of fake "watch me be educated" crap I hate. This guy is trying way too hard to be dark and brooding--a pastime best left to Anne Rice, in my opinion--but his uncomfortable self awareness just gets in the way. For the first two thirds of the book or so, I managed to swallow his "watch me be precocious" song and dance, then I gave up.

"Write what you know" is more than a saying; it conveys a very real warning, about the dangers we face when we attempt to tackle social issues beyond our experience. This book reads like it was written by a teenager, someone who's learned everything he knows about human interaction, lost chances, and the pain of adulthood through VH1 specials. It's obvious he's not speaking from firsthand experience; his characters' experiences, and their reactions to them, are all too trite. I couldn't force myself to care what happened, because it's obvious the author doesn't understand, in the least, the implications of the plot he's created.

Sometimes, over time, writers improve. Sometimes they improve a lot. Part of this phenomenon is increased experience; part of it is increased confidence. When I was first writing scholarly papers, I bowed to my professors' pressure to conform. I listened when I was told, "You can't say, 'the peasants got the short end of the stick', that's not scholarly!" Never mind that that was the most concise, most accurate description of what was going on. It wasn't until I was older that I finally had the confidence to write in my own voice. So, you know, there's always hope that, with a little more practice, and a lot more growth, he'll improve.

Of course, he's not a teenager--at least, I don't think he is. Most teenagers, especially the smart ones, are fairly pretentious and self satisfied. It's worrying to see these traits in a full-fledged adult.

Of course, once you get past these defects, Nightwatch still has no plot. When it comes to modern fantasy, I'm generally not expecting miracles. This genre isn't about deep and meaningful; its readers don't want it, and its plots and premises don't lend themselves well to it. Still, just because a book isn't Tess of the D'Urbervilles doesn't mean I want to feel completely brain-dead when I try to read it. A good book, at whatever level of "good" you're talking about, needs to have a definite point of view, a narrative theme, and a message beyond the simple mechanics of the plot. In other words, all good books are more than the sum of their parts.

Nightwatch has all the complexity of Goodnight Moon, with none of its emotional impact.

Whether teenagers or adults, we do the best when we write what we know. Otherwise, we can end up alienated from the language we're trying to use, and disconnected from the story we're trying to tell. That's what's happened here, and it makes for disappointing, pathetic reading.

I give it a D minus. I'd give it an F, but I save Fs for authors with racist, sexist, or otherwise harmful agendas who produce books powerful enough to influence people to their point of view.