Nightwatch is a series like no other.
A continuous development of storyline and character just like any meaningful literary series, but…
The installments of Nightwatch span several literary genres. Urban fantasy, space fantasy, spyfi, science fiction, weird western, comedy, romance, and satire. Nightwatch challenges you to do something different, to expand your literary experience with a single story that gets a different feel from one book to the other.
Find detailed references to these books in the The Books in Detail menu, but here they are presented in order of progression. Progression, a funny word. Since many of these stories take place in other universes than ours, who’s to say which stories are really, positively first or last in order? Me, that’s who. I suggest you can read Last Days and Times, Shining Star, Fiona Street, and Galactic Geographic in any order you please, but Redemption Song, Bad Lands, Uncivil Service, Voice of the City and Transporter should be read in that order and after the first four.
Or you can do what you want. You’re the boss, after all.
These do not constitute all of Nightwatch. More to come starting with
Black Door, A military sci-fi action extravaganza featuring Fiona Street’s old NSA unit as it fights a holding battle against multiple incursions from the nightmare verse. Both Fiona Street and Sally Reiser guest star.
A Light in the Black, a Shining Star sequel in which the twins face the wrath of a resurgent Community of God and their vengeful Reverend Mother.
Nightwatch, the book that brings it all to a head. When the wall between universes falls, Fiona Street and her Nightwatch team must beat back the horrors of everlasting nightmares unleashed upon mankind.
Like any series, it’s all a work in progress.
But … what is Nightwatch?
Ours is but one of an infinite number of universes. Among these universes, whatever can happen, does happen. The closest worlds to us in this multiverse are what are known as the eighteen contiguous universes, and these are patrolled and enforced by marshals, just to keep everyone honest.
Within that grouping of the eighteen contiguous universes, there’re ours, the universe of Shining Star, the universe of Galactic Geographic, and the universes of Bad Lands. And there’s the nightmare universe, a world birthed from the dreams and fears of all creatures here in our own space-time continuum.
A universe of dreams. Why not? And those dreams borrowed from a neighboring continuum. Everything went fine for millions of years, with our dreams and thoughts populating and diversifying that new universe. Then World War II happened.
Alongside the atom bomb, America developed a weapon of terror called the Drehd Machine. The machine could amplify the fears and paranoia of any population it was inflicted upon, making that population unable to defend itself when American troops moved in. The Drehd Machines were never deployed, but one was lost to the bottom of the Pacific when the plane carrying it crashed.
Somehow, that Drehd Machine became active.
Somehow, it’s still working, pumping out waves of radiation that pump human fears up to eleven. Now, instead of a quiet seeping of our dreams into that other universe, our fears are punching holes through space-time to flood that world with terrible, terrible new realities.
The creatures there think they’re under attack.
Naturally, they fight back.
Nightwatch chronicles that conflict, where Fiona Street assembles a force to beat back incursions from the Nightmare universe, then to work with those in that world to mend the breaks between continuums and attempt to shut down the Drehd Machine.