I don't know why I remembered this image courtesy of Warren Ellis. Perhaps I need to cut back on coffee and crises at work.

Also got me thinking about whether to hold out for an oversized collected edition of Transmetropolitan or just buy the individual trades. And on the subject of commercialism that I wasn't, but Spider Jerusalem's was, here is a digital interpretation - 'Monoculture'.

The Day Watch
by
Sergei Lukyanenko

Walking the streets of Moscow, indistinguishable from the rest of its population, are The Others. Possessors of supernatural powers and capable of entering the Twilight, a shadowy world that exists in parallel to our own, each owes allegiance either to The Dark or The Light.

In The Day Watch, second book of the Night Watch trilogy, Alice, a young but powerful Dark Other, attends a planning meeting with her comrades in the Day Watch. The team is on a mission to apprehend an uninitiated Other, a practicing Dark witch who has so far eluded the bureaux responsible for finding and initiating unlicensed practitioners of magic.

It seems a routine operation. But when they arrive, the Night Watch team has already made the arrest. A fierce battle ensues, during which Alice almost dies. Drained of her powers, she is sent to recuperate at a youth camp near the Black Sea. There she meets Igor; the chemistry between them is instant and irresistible.

But then comes a shattering realisation: Igor is a Light Mage. Suddenly Alice remembers him as one of those involved in the battle that left her crippled. Now that they know, there is no alternative to a magical duel, a battle that neither of them wants to win...

Set in a vividly realised post-Soviet Russia, where vampires operate under license and Good and Evil exist in a Cold War-like balance of power, The Day Watch is a page-turning fantasy thriller, an international bestseller as strikingly original as Anne Rice or Philip Pullman.