A different kind of Twilight

When I first caught whiff of this Twilight buzz last year I did have flashes of vampires and werewolves enter into my mind but they weren't the teenagers looking for love from the books I was thinking of.

And instead of being set in the Northwest my mind was hoping for a movie set much colder and much further away (a place Sarah Palin can see from her house, apparently). There is a noticeable lack of teen angst but tons of rich fantasy world building and a lovely graying where the good guys aren't always so good and the bad guys aren't always so bad.
It's called "Night Watch" which takes place in Russia and follows a low grade light magician as he polices and keeps track of the dark ones.

It begins with a rogue vampire attack but the fascinating thing is that in this world the vampires are low level dark ones. It's the dark magicians and witches who have much more power and use that to keep the blood suckers in check. But the light and dark ones have to walk a fine line. Due to a truce agreed to thousands of years ago the dark and light ones are held accountable and for every light magician that gets to heal people a dark one gets to curse.

In the world of the Night Watch the "others" as they're called get their power from something called the Twilight (or in the film the gloom) and can use it to vanish in and out of the world.

I love how it is a fantasy book that for once isn't set in America or England, it's a peek into some of the myths from Russia (a land we never get to learn much about thanks to the Cold War anyway) and a view of it post fall of Communism.

If you like the Twilight books for the rich world or the fascinating immortal characters and their powers but not so big into the teen angst or the stalkery romance I'd suggest picking up Night Watch. (But don't see the movie til you read the books. It makes so much more sense after reading the books).

And to go with the Vampire theme as of late I recently made a pendant for the blood drinking minded.

It's a Vampire's Smile nestled atop my copy of Dracula, the book that started it all.
Are you big into the vampire craze right now? Or are you more of a purist when it comes to your undead?