OK, let’s do it. Finish is in sight.

28
12:00 A.M.
CEREMONY

Rex, Melissa and Jessica go to the center of the snake pit where a stone pillar is located. Said pillar apparently shows Rex lore recorded by previous Midnighters. The stories on it change every night, so Rex tries to come there often. Or, in other words, it’s a plot device designed to give the characters just enough relevant information for the plot to work (like telling them about the talent-finding ceremony) but not enough for them to know everything.

Eh, I don’t know, feels rather cheap. I would prefer there being a way to summon lore you want and Rex just not knowing proper commands and fumbling with it to the best of his ability, managing to get access to some lore but missing another. That would imply that the stone was designed to actively share knowledge instead of just tease people with it (because, seriously, you have a whole desert, just record all of the lore at once. Would take a lot of space, but at least any part of it could be accessed. Also, plain old books. Really helpful.) and it would give Rex a bit more agency with him actively trying to uncover the right lore.

Anyway, the ceremony calls for Jessica to drip some blood into a small crevice in the pillar. She is reluctant, but eventually does that. The stone pillar starts to tremble, causing a small earthquake. Then it breaks in half, and the group (joined by Jonathan and Dess who came during the commotion) finds a symbol of a crescent claw holding a small flame in the crack.

Apparently, “midnight lore” uses hieroglyphic language since Rex says it’s two words joined together: “flame” and “bringer.” So, Jessica’s talent is flame-bringer. Neither Rex nor anyone else knows how it’s supposed to work, and Rex specifically says there is no such talent. I thought we’ve established he doesn’t have all the lore.

Either way, Dess points out it better be something good since they are going to have company soon.

Well, that’s the chapter. Two things to point out:

– Melissa seems to recover from her experience with Jonathan and is back to her antagonistic self towards Jessica, calling her wimpy for not wanting to cut her finger.

– Just who has left the lore in the first place, anyway? Rex mentions the lore all through the book, but never really talks about people or beings writing it. It couldn’t have been written before the secret hour was created since it utilizes its properties. Rex, in fact, once mentions that the lore is full of stories concerning telepaths, said in relation to Melissa enjoying brainwashing way too much, so the obvious suspects would be previous generations of Midnighters, but where are they? We know for sure only the kids are active during the secret hour, thanks to Melissa locating them all, so what happened? Were they all slaughtered by darklings? Was there a huge gap between midnight-born children, so the old generation just died off? Since Rex talks about stories in the lore, it would be nice to get some details on that. Really, that’s something that should have come up during the exposition.


29
12:00 A.M.
FLAME-BRINGER

Dess elaborates that her defenses are about to fall. An argument erupts between her and Rex over whose fault it is she doesn’t have her duffel bag with supplies anymore. The argument is interrupted by Melissa, who reacts poorly to the intense negative thoughts, it seems.

The group switches to discussing what “flame-bringer” could mean, eventually taking it literally and proposing Jessica can start fire in the secret hour. Nobody really believes it’s possible, but they try anyway since the situation is desperate. However, nobody has any matches or lighters, so Jessica is stuck with trying to get sparks out of bashing Rex’s ring on a stone. She does indeed produce some sparks of the right color, unnatural in the blue light. Sparks won’t stop the army of slithers and darklings, though, so she tries to set fire on the map given to her by Dess before the party. She doesn’t succeed, sparks vanishing before a fire can be started, and the slithers are drawing near.

She looks at her watch to check how much time is left until the end of the secret hour. Jonathan points out that the watch is electronic yet still works.

“Jessica looked at it uncomprehendingly. She realized that she hadn’t worn it
in the midnight hour before. She always took it off before going to bed.”

So, yeah, she didn’t have the watch before now.

Jessica thinks about the watch working, thinks about the building she set alight by giving it a name, puts it all together, pulls out her flashlight, gives it a name and lights it up just as the defenses fall and spiders come for her. Spiders start to scream. Pretty sure it’s physically impossible, but whatever, monsters.

So, yeah, that’s her talent: she can start fire, she can make electricity work. Apparently, enchanting helps, though I am unsure how the two are connected exactly.

And, honestly, the talent is pretty meh, conceptually speaking. I feel it’s just too straightforward. The rest of the talents shown are pretty original and tie into the mystery of the secret hour: Rex can see the invisible touch of midnight, allowing him to investigate stuff during the day and learn lore during the night, Dess is great at enchanting, giving the party weapons to fight and organizing defenses, Jonathan can kinda fly, but is limited by the laws of physics restricting his momentum, which results in a rather exotic battlefield where he needs to think fast to get anything done. Melissa probably has the most standard power, but hey, it’s a good source of horror for her and the people around her, so I’m not complaining.

Jessica… is a walking weapon of mass destruction. As long as she has some flashlights, she can take down monsters that before were threatening to the whole party. That renders the rest of Midnighters less relevant, especially Dess since just one flashlight accomplished more than defenses Dess spent a day (and maybe more if she needed to gather materials before) setting up. The talent is also way too easy to use. It doesn’t require as much preparations as Dess’, it wouldn’t run out of juice in an hour, it doesn’t require quick thinking like Jonathan’s flying, and it’s useful only to fight darklings instead of a more broad utility.

Basically, Jessica doesn’t fit. She’s Old Man Henderson among normal PCs, and not in a good way. Instead of complimenting the party dynamic with her abilities, she breaks it.

Basically, I don’t like it much. I guess the new team can still work with the right types of conflicts and story structure. The group dynamic is more interesting than monsters anyway, so concentrating on it would compensate for some inherent problems, but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

Well, I guess we’ll see in the next book how it goes, should I do the readthrough of it.


30
12:00 A.M.
TALENT


“The white light swept across the crater floor, reducing the spiders to ash in
its wake. Shrill, horrible cries rose up from the swarming army, like a thousand
whistles blowing at once. The tide of hairy bodies turned away swiftly, pouring
back up the snake pit’s sloped walls. Jessica pointed the flashlight into the
air, and the slithers that crossed its path burst into flame, suddenly red
against the dark sky. She shone the light straight up to search for the darkling
over their heads, but the creature had disappeared into the distance, howling.

A last few spiders crawled witlessly around the smoking bodies of their
fellows, and she burned them one by one with the flashlight.

The white light seemed unreal and uncanny in the blue time, revealing
everything in its true colors. The beam drove the blue from the landscape,
returned the reds and browns of the desert, and turned the charred bodies of
slithers and spiders a dull gray.

Even the moon above them seemed gray now, pale and unthreatening, washed out and emptied of its menace.”

That’s pretty badass, admittedly, but it also destroys the threat the secret hour presents. It is no longer a mysterious time ruled by monsters, but merely Jessica’s shooting range.I’d expect something like that to come at the end of the series, not at the end of the first book. It would have probably been better if she couldn’t make electricity work now and was stuck with normal open fire only. She could still save the day by erecting flaming barriers made out of clothes and such. Still promising, but more low-key. Then again, it would make her even more similar to Dess, so, eh.

“Turn that thing off!” Dess complained.

Jessica started when she saw her friends’ eyes flashing angry purple in the
light. Dess cowered behind her hands. Jonathan, Melissa, and Rex had all covered
their eyes, their faces twisted in pain.

Only Jessica could stand the light.”

Well, at least thematically it’s appropriate. Jessica is an intruder in this alien landscape, and she imposes different logic upon her surroundings, changing them to suit herself rather than native denizens.

Anyway, she switches the light off, and other Midnighters congratulate her on defeating the army of slithers. Melissa ominously comments that the darklings are not happy about this new development, but Jessica dismisses it with “well, what can they do about it?” being still high on her victory.

They then speculate about all the things Jessica can potentially do with her power, like giving them a radio and making a car engine work and such, though it remains a speculation at this point.

Jonathan asks if she wants to fly with him home, but she points out she needs to return to the party. They kiss, and Jonathan flies away.

Rex and Melissa stick around to clear up the mess a bit. Jessica goes to the party.

“Jessica had never seen a frozen fire before. It didn’t look like much. The
bluish flames cast no light, were barely visible except as a warping of the air,
like ripples of heat in the desert.

She didn’t want to look at the frozen people, especially their faces, which
seemed ugly and dead, like a bad photograph. So she peered closely at the fire,
reaching out a tentative finger to touch one of the flames.

The heat was still there, but muted and soft, like a sound from the
next
room. Her touch left a glowing mark suspended in the air, as if the red
flame
were trying to poke its way through into the blue time. She pulled her
finger back. Where she had touched it, the frozen flame was red now.
That one spark
of light stood out against the blue veil that lay across the desert
night.”

That really doesn’t make much sense. Deprived of fuel, the lone spark should vanish soon after being unfrozen by Jessica. I honestly can’t even begin to speculate how it works.

Midnight ends, and Jessica is spotted by Constanza. She asks Jessica why she’s there, since she saw earlier her “taking a walk” with Steve, to which Jessica replies Steve turned to be a “creep.” Constanza asks what happened, and, upon closer look, notices Jessica’s clothes being in disarray. Jessica tries to apologies for it, but Constanza waves it off, asks Jessica if she’s OK and says she will take Jessica home now. Jessica agrees.

They run into Steve on their way, and then…

“He never saw it coming; Jessica hardly saw it herself. In one fluid motion
Constanza released her, took a step forward, and punched Steve in the face.”

Constanza remains an awesome character.

Without skipping a bit, she continues her discussion with Jessica about how boys from Broken Arrow town (that is, boys on this party) are full of themselves and out of control, and how they should sometime organize a more local bonfire, with Bixby crowd, since Jessica said she likes it. Jessica smiles and promises to bring matches.


31
12:00 A.M.
NIGHT WATCH

That’s basically an epilogue. Melissa, Rex and Dess are at the snake’s pit. Dess measures cracks left by Jessica while Melissa scans the desert for darklings and talks with Rex.

She says the darklings were waiting for Jessica or someone like her to come, and while they failed to kill her now, they will try again soon. Rex is reluctant to agree, most likely too fascinated by Jessica’s power still.

Melissa exposits a bit about the rest of the group. Jonathan and Jessica are flying happily, lost in their own little world, Jessica being excited by her new power. Dess is investigating some numerological phenomenon which she refuses to share (her nonsensical finding about coordinates). Rex wants to know more and is eager to read more lore, but above all else he’s excited about the prospect of adding to the lore with his own writings.

The midnight ends, and they head back to town. On their way, Melissa listens to the rare thoughts of people who are still awake, especially cops.

“There’s no way I can pay this bill….

How was I supposed to know she was allergic to peanuts?

I can’t believe it’s Monday again tomorrow….

We must have Jessica Day.”

Melissa is shocked over the last thought and tries to track down the source, but can’t. Since the secret hour has ended, the thought must be human in origin. Rex asks what’s wrong, but Melissa says nothing, it’s fine.

Well, as those things go, it’s a solid promise of a sequel.

That’s it. The Secret Hour has ended. Tune in next time for the final thoughts and What’s Next segment.