Thursday, February 25, 2010

Book Review - Midnighters #2: Touching Darkness by Scott Westerfeld

Midnighters #2: Touching Darkness by Scott Westerfeld is of course book two of Scott's very successful Midnighters series.

Book #1 mostly concentrated on introducing readers to the Blue Hour, the extra 25th hour in the day that Jessica and her friends Rex, Melissa, Dess and Jonathan are able to move around in. It is also an hour wherein darklings, mysterious and dangerous creatures from a dark dimension populate the earth. Jessica and her friends have certain special gifts that help them combat these darklings, and in this book #2, we get to know more about each of the kids and their backgrounds.

As Jessica and friends learn more about their special gifts, especially Jessica with her 'light bringer' talent that can pretty much extinguish a darkling's life - they discover that there are humans in Bixby who also know about the Blue hour and the darklings. More worrying, the humans are after one of the Midnighter children. The fate? To be turned into a horrifying half human- half darkling creature...

Can Jessica and her friends work to stop this from happening? To find out, read the book!

As before, I was very impressed with Scott's imagination. I particularly loved the idea of imbuing metal objects with special powers ascribed to them by names. That the power came from the naming - kinda blew my mind with that one!

Check out Midnighters #2: Touching Darkness by Scott Westerfeld on Amazon!

Monday, February 15, 2010

Book Review - Midnighters #1: The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld

Scott Westerfeld is more known now as a writer of books geared towards the young adult market, and this book 'Midnighters #1: The Secret Hour' is likewise geared towards that age group. I do think that adults would also be able to enjoy it, as Scott doesn't dumb down when he writes.

I really liked the premise in this book - 15-year-old Jessica Day moves into the small town of Bixby, Oklahoma - and in addition to the stress of being the new girl in school, Jessica discovers that for the town of Bixby, time freezes for an hour at the stroke of midnight, except for her. In that hour, she is able to wander around an alternate reality where everything looks terribly beautiful.

Jessica quickly learns that she is not alone and that she has been given this special gift by virtue of her being born on the stroke of midnight. The other kids she meets who call themselves 'the Midnighters' - Rex, Dess, Melissa and Jonathan - all also have special powers that they employ against creatures of the night who crawl into our world at that extra Midnight hour.

Jessica tries to discover her own special power, and while doing so, the children risk their lives battling the dark creatures who unfortunately seem to grow in power daily.

I thought this was a fantastic very imaginative series from Scott Westerfeld. There are scary elements of course, but the kids deal with them matter-of-factly and their normal daily lives were a good contrast to all the craziness that occurred in the Midnight hour.

Check out Midnighters #1: The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld on Amazon!