This was a busy week. Well, let’s dig into the second book of Midnighters trilogy and touch the darkness. Don’t forget your gloves.
Before we begin proper, can we talk about how YA covers suddenly got shitty at some point? I mean, compare the cover at the top of the post with the new one:
I mean, seriously, you have a surreal clock-themed cover and you change it to that? Whose bright idea was it that a blank face staring into reader’s soul has any appeal whatsoever?
It’s not just Midnighters, either. A lot of YA books use something similar. I get that the YA literature tries to distinguish itself from children literature as well as invoke movie feel with photo-realistic faces, but seriously, look at it. Would you pick a book with that on a cover if you didn’t know anything about its contents?
Well, I guess it’s a moot point for you, since I’m here to tell you all about the contents, so let’s move on.
1
11:51 P.M.
LAWS OF GRAVITY
The books starts with Jessica being happy over finally unpacking everything and sorting various trash like old posters and such out of her stuff. Exciting openings is not author’s strong point. At least she isn’t whining like some people. In fact, she is pretty happy with the current situation, especially since Jonathan shows up shortly after, they kiss and go flying.
They stop to rest on a gas station and talk about physics exam of all things.
‘You know what I mean. Physics is full of crazy stuff like that, but it’s also real.’
‘With you it is.’ Jessica pulled his hand to her lips. ‘Here at midnight.’
It’s funny because we’ve established that the secret hour is pretty damn inconsistent and makes little sense. Even restricting “laws of physics” to Newtonian mechanics only, there is still plenty of stuff behaving differently during the secret hour. Like that damn car that didn’t fly foreward when Jessica touched it.
Also, note the apostrophe instead of proper quotation marks. My question is simple: why? Seriously, it’s not even different between the normal time and the secret hour or anything, the book just uses it to mark dialogue. It’s not even style because it’s hard to see the difference, it’s just weird.
Eh, maybe my version was just converted wrong. I do actually own the books on paper, but they are in Russian, so for this blog I use… an alternative.
Anyway, Jessica and Jonathan talk about flipping coins.
JON: Heads.
(He picks it up and puts it in his money bag. The process is repeated.)
Heads.
(Again.)
JON: Heads.
(Again.)
Heads.
(Again.)
Heads.
JESS(flipping a coin): There is an art to the building up of suspense.
JON: Heads.
JESS(flipping another): Though it can be done by luck alone.
JON: Heads.
JESS: If that's the word I'm after.
JON(raises his head at JESS): Seventy-six love.
(JESS gets up but has nowhere to go. She spins another coin over her shoulder without looking at it, her attention being directed at her environment or lack of it.)
Heads.
JESS: A weaker woman might be moved to re-examine her faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of probability.
(She slips a coin over her shoulder as she goes to look upstage.)
JON: Heads.
(JESS, examining the confines of the stage, flips over two more coins, as she does so, one by one of course. JON announces each of them as "heads".)
JESS (musing): The law of probability, as it has been oddly asserted, is something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys (she has surprised himself)... if six monkeys were...
JON: Game?
JESS: Were they?
JON: Are you?
JESS (understanding): Games. (Flips a coin.) The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their -
JON: Heads. (He picks up the coin.)
JESS: Which at first glance does not strike one as a particularly rewarding speculation, in either sense, even without the monkeys. I mean you wouldn't bet on it. I mean I would, but you wouldn't... (As she flips a coin.)
JON: Heads.
JESS: Would you? (Flips a coin.)
JON: Heads.
As you can see, this scene clearly establishes protagonists’ personalities, even though in the source material they were nearly interchangeable tertiary characters whose scenes were routinely skipped, as well as establishing the tone and, to a certain extent, themes of the…
Oh, wait, wrong book.
Jessica asks whether or not there is a moment at the top of coin’s ascent where it’s completely still or if it moves constantly. Jonathan being a smartass and brings up that nothing is truly still at any time, given that the Earth is spinning and revolves around the Sun, which is also moving relative to other stars, etc. Instead of just clarifying she was talking about the movement of a coin relative to Earth’s surface, which would be logical, Jessica instead asks Jonathan to assume Earth is completely still, as well as everything else except the coin, which prompts Jonathan to say that the coin wouldn’t be still, since it would still carry the momentum if everything else were to suddenly stop. That’s why physics is hard for you, Jessica.
(Fun fact: long before Nigerian princes, there was a letter-based scam. A number of letters printed by some individuals were delivered to a number of homes. Letters promised a new super-fast comfortable method of travel which recipients of the letters can experience for a low price which I don’t remember. Around five dollars, I think. Some people replied back, sending their money. They soon received letters explaining to them that the Earth moves constantly at a crazy speed, so all they need to do is look out of the window, relax and enjoy the view.)
The reason why I describe that conversation, which is nothing more than a cute banter in the book, is because it just highlights the true scope and alien nature of the secret hour. In order for the secret hour to work the way it’s shown to work, so many laws of physics must be altered or ignored, it’s not even funny. I mean, that was the bulk of my previous readthrough, I would know. The conversation about coins would be a good segue into the discussion about the nature of the secret hour.
Instead, Jessica uses it as a segue to invite Jonathan into her bedroom (she played with a quarter right before midnight and it’s still frozen in the air of her room, heads up). Well, she’s proactive, I give her that.
“She pulled him closer and kissed him. ‘Just come.’”
This sentence is brought to you by Out of Context Text Forecast.
We also learn that she’s still uneasy at midnight as the reason for her inviting Jonathan to her bedroom is because she wants to be somewhere normal with him for a change. Well, that has some nice potential for conflict, especially since Jonathan isn’t all there during normal time, so keep an eye on how it develops.
We are spared sloppy teenage make-outs (one good thing about the romantic subplot in this book is that it remains a subplot and doesn’t clatter the pages, unlike certain other books I could name) as on their way home Jessica and Jonathan find a stalker with a camera under her window.
Giving the timing of his appearance, it’s obvious he’s connected with the secret hour somehow, but he himself is frozen, so he can’t be a Midnighter.
Also, Jessica uses the term “stiff” she picked from Melissa. Yeah, of all the aspects of Midnighters lifestyle to pick… Jessica, you are better of with hair dyed black, seriously.
Jonathan says they should consult Rex tomorrow, but for now Jessica should go inside since she would be safer here. He promises to stick around and make sure the man wouldn’t do anything.
With that and another deep kiss, they part. Jessica is understandably spooked over this new development. She has tangible power in the secret hour, but during normal time an adult man is still a serious threat to her, so she expects to not get much sleep tonight.
Once midnight passes, she is jolted up by a sudden sound, expecting the worst and looking around. But it’s just her quarter finally landing.
“Jessica crawled over and peered down at it.
‘Tails,’ she muttered.”
Well, now I’m convinced the book is fucking with me.
2
12:01 A.M.
FLATLAND
This one is a quick chapter. The secret hour ends and Jonathan sees the man taking a quick succession of pictures, clearly indicating he’s looking for the signs of the secret hour. Then he leaves. Jonathan gets off a roof, only now realizing sticking there was a bad idea, and follows the man to his car. The man drives away, but Jonathan manages to read the car’s plate number.
The point of this chapter lies more in driving home how much Jonathan hates normal time, and it does a reasonably good job on it, both telling and showing us how Jonathan struggles under regular gravity. He calls normal time Flatland, which is silly, but the contrast of a nickname with the lack of a similar name for the secret hour in his narration does indicate he regards midnight as normal, which normal time is an alien place for him.
He briefly wonders if he should go to Jessica and sleep on her floor, since it’s bloody cold outside and it’s a long walk home for him, but then he realizes it would risk them being discovered, so he limps away.
Well, a few more scenes like that, and I may start to like Jonathan.
3
1:19 A.M.
GEOSTATIONARY
“The dream came again, full of glowing wire frames, lines of fire forming spheres, like the doubled eights of a baseball’s stitching or the twirl of peel left after an orange is stripped in one long spiral. The lines twisted around each other, bright snakes twining on a beach ball, performing new tricks every night. They examined their combinations restlessly, searching for one pattern out of many . . .”
Oh, hi there, Shirou. Didn’t know you were in this book.
Oh, wait, it’s Dess awakening from a dream and discovering she slept through the secret hour again, which never happened in the past. Though, you know, a crossover between Midnighters and Nasuverse would be amusing. Dess and Rin can share pseudo-scientific theories that contradict themselves when you think about it too much.
Also, somebody should write Unlimited Scrap Metalwork for Dess.
Anyway, we find out that Dess is plagued by the dreams about coordinates ever since she started her little project on researching Bixby location and related data. Ugh, this again.
“Sometimes she wondered if this whole project had unhinged her. Maybe she was reading too much into Bixby’s location.”
First, no, you were unhinged long before that in an adorably fucked up fashion. Secondly, yes, you are reading too much into it. I’ve explained why it makes no sense. I’ve used pretty colors, soundtrack and pictures, so you know it to be true.
But, of course, the book has other plans, so Dess informs us the geometry of the secret hour is complicated. Melissa’s power fluctuates in intensity depending on her location, Rex’s lore sites (apparently there is more than one now) follow a certain pattern, and there are places where the barrier between the two worlds is thin, and people can be sucked in should they visit it at a wrong time, becoming food for darklings. Apparently, darklings don’t go after normal frozen people, only after those who fell through the cracks (as well as after animals in the same predicament).
Dess basically tries to determine the shape of the space affected by the secret hour and its properties in relation to Midnighters’ powers and darklings’ presence. It’s all tied to the coordinates, which I really don’t like, but aside from that it’s fairly interesting. If you assume Dess is talking about ley lines instead, it’s a pretty cool mystical research, cementing once again her status as a local occultist.
“The big problem was measuring all this stuff. The blue time didn’t come with street signs and trig tables, and you couldn’t Google it for more details. When she pumped Melissa for data, Dess always hid her thoughts, not wanting to reveal her sudden interest in the mindcaster’s reception problems. For some reason, Dess wanted to keep this discovery her own little secret . . . Well, okay, she knew the reason. Rex and Melissa definitely had their secrets, after all, and Jessica and Jonathan were so far up Couple Mountain, she was considering sending a rescue team. This thing was hers.”
That does show how the dynamic between Midnighters actively harms them. It’s not yet that big, but without the communication problems Dess could have been much further in her research by now.
Anyway, Dess sneaks out of her room and goes to check more of her dad’s maps. In his office she finds a new GPS tool which shows her coordinates of her living room down to the meter. It’s far more precise than any map she has seen and would be invaluable in her research. Naturally, it’s something her father has from work, so borrowing it would be tricky, especially since it would be useless during the secret hour with all satellites being frozen. So, she decides to steal it, letting her father think he’s lost it somewhere.
“‘Pretty . . .,’ she whispered.”
Also, she’s Gollum now.
OK, I can’t really fault her too much for that. Her research is potentially important, what with looming threats and all, and it’s not like she can get something like that easily. Her rationalization (she thinks her father wouldn’t use it because he hates fancy tech) is pretty weak – it’s a work tool, presumably needed for something, and at the very least he can get in trouble for losing equipment like that – but the action is understandable.
Plus, you know, no one can resist the will of One GPS for long.
There is another relevant detail: one of her dreams was about diamonds circling the Earth’s orbit, remaining still relative to the surface. Playing with GPS, she realized the dream was about the satellite, even though she wasn’t consciously thinking about anything related to them. She shrugs it off for later, though.
Well, that’s it for now. Not a bad start for a book, all things considered. Some plot hooks, some character moments. Tune in next time for more world-building.