Are You A Midnighter?

Midnighters: The Secret Hour
Scott Westerfeld

To usher in the new year I had to discover that a day is comprised of 25 and not 24 hours and that a handful of people are the only ones who walk through that magical extra hour. You could be one of them really, if you were born anytime between that mysterious midnight hour. But I'm getting ahead of the story.

Bixby, Oklahoma is not your ordinary small town. It has a curfew for those below eighteen year olds. The water tastes funny (or so they say). And every house has this thirteen point star plaque on them. Those are just a handful of things Jessica Day discovered in her new highschool after she and the rest of her family transferred from Chicago following her mother's promotion. And then one night she discovered that when the clock strikes twelve everything freezes except her. She can traipse through the whole town turned silvery blue on her own. Until she realized it wasn't a dream when she met others like her.

There aren’t really twenty-four hours in the day, Jessica. There are twenty-five. But one of them is rolled up too tight to see. For most people it flashes by in an instant. But we can see it, live in it.

The midnighters are basically those born during midnight. And the extra hour isn't the only magical thing about the story. All those born within the time frame have a power of sorts. Rex, Melissa and Dess - three highschool outcasts - now have to explain it to Jess because she has yet to discover her power. Those powers are necessary because the twenty-fifth hour isn't meant for humans. There are things out there - slithers - who live in the dark. And right now they are after the new girl in town.

So now's my time to gush. But let me explain.

I've read all four of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series last year and I couldn't get enough of it. It came to a point that I'd probably trust anything Westerfeld has ever written and I was glad that this one didn't disappoint. The first book in the series is a fine balance of teenage life, science fiction and well, horror. I mean if a dark, slithering thing coming at you isn't horror then I don't know what is. That's the lovely thing about Westerfeld's stories so far; there is plot that actually goes somewhere and then there's good writing sure to make you turn pages and next thing you know you only have a handful to go and you curse yourself for not having the second book in the series yet. So yes, this is a fitting introduction to the whole series.

Series? Yes, this is a series and I want to read the next book. There are three books so far though I've no idea if this is just a trilogy. But I want to know what will happen next, particularly since I noticed a hint dropped sometime in the pages that I'm sure will be mentioned again in the succeeding books. Well, that's just my gut talking.

If I sound like a Westerfeld fan I probably am.

Then again, Westerfeld probably has the pulse on what it's like as a teenager not to mention a wandering mind for plots that is magical yet believable, scary but adventurous without forgetting that he's writing human characters thrust in situations out of the ordinary.

I need to stop gushing. Go get this for a fast yet satisfying read (save for that time when you turn in the last page and wish you have the next book ready). Oh wait I said that before.

Other interesting point of view:

Amanda at 5-Squared

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Midnighters: The Secret Hour won the Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel in 2004. This is my 6th book for the Book Awards Reading Challenge II.