In the small town of Bixby, OK, everything freezes at midnight. For one hour, the only things that move are the creatures that belong to this secret hour, and the handful of teenagers that were born at the stroke of midnight, thus enabling them to exist within this time period. They call themselves Midnighters, and when a new Midnighter moves to town, oblivious of all this, the old Midnighters have to protect her from the creatures that seem to feel she’s intruded on their space.

I read this book way too fast. It is a real page-turner, and I let myself leap through it as fast as it would carry me, gobbling it within a few hours. As a consequence, I feel a little dazed thinking about it, and I’m going to have to read it again, I think, to take everything in. It was a really good book, though not as insightful or as masterful as the Uglies trilogy was. This was more action and plot than depth and character, whereas the Uglies trilogy had a good balance of those things. But I can’t complain. It was fun and satisfying, even if I do have to read it again. It also did a good job opening for the next book in the series, while still having closure on this book. Westerfeld is fast becoming one of my favorite authors, even if my reviews on his books tend to be really awful. Sorry about that.