The Night Watch books
I just finished “The Night Watch” series of books by Sergei Lukyanenko, a Russian urban fantasy that rocks socks (if you like urban magic action books that is).
They follow (mostly) the story of Anton, an “Other” or more specifically a Light Magician, as he works in the Night Watch. The Night Watch patrol the actions of Dark Others, Vampires, Werewolves, Dark Magicians, etc. (The Dark Others have their own watch called “The Day Watch”, hence the name of the second book). Sounds all black and white, but nicely isn’t. For a Light Other to do good, they have to let the Dark do something bad, for example the Night Watch give licenses to Vampires to hunt.
They also share several similar concepts with Lost Heroes, which is why I’m talking about them here. If I had read these a few years I’m pretty certain they would have been a big influence. But now instead I can point to them as being examples of what Lost Heroes is about.
In the world of Night Watch, there are humans and their are “Others”, those who are supernaturally different. And so too in Lost Heroes, though I haven’t differentiated between “Light” and “Dark” per say and the types of Others are different too.
There is also the “Twilight”, a realm that lies across mundane reality but only accessible to Others. In the movies (did I mention there are two movies based on the books?), this is translated from Russian as “the Gloom”. I like the word Gloom, it conjures up some great mental images of a sticky grim alternative world but Twilight makes more sense within the world of the books; a multi-layered spiritual planes of existence. In Lost Heroes there is the “Veil” and crossing the Veil you enter the Spirit World. In these books, there is a complex relationship between Others and this Twilight and similarly in Lost Heroes there is a power-play between Others and the Veil (which will affect how powers work too).
I’m amazed there isn’t a PnP RPG based on this world. It’s nearly crying out for it and I’d certainly pay for it. (I do believe there is a Computer Game RPG though).
Oh and by the way, there made two movies. I’ve seen the first one and thought it was good (but the book is infinitely better and more compelling). I haven’t seen the second one.