The Boy and The Darkness - References To Other Works

References To Other Works

• The premise of the story is similar to Stephen King's The Talisman.
• The Kitten explains that there are three forces in all worlds: Light, Darkness, and Gloom. These three forces figure prominently in Lukyanenko's World of Watches series.
• One of the swords the shopkeeper attempts to sell Danny is an atomic sword from A Lord from Planet Earth trilogy. In fact, Danny appears to remember something for a second upon seeing the sword, but quickly forgets it. The second novel in the trilogy, The Planet which Doesn't Exist, has a secondary character - a teenage boy from Earth named Danny, whose memories of his extraterrestrial adventures get erased by a brain trauma.
• A similar theme appears in The King in the Window, by Adim Gopnik (Hyperion Children's Books), an adventure set in modern day Paris starring an American boy who finds himself at the center of a war between window and mirror spirits, is a mixed bag of fantasy, technology and history. True Mirrors figure prominently in the story, as they are the key to defeating the evil Master of Mirrors, who steals souls through the deadening effect of mirror gazing.