The Secret Hour
The Midnighters trilogy, Book 1
Scott Westerfield
Eos
Fiction, YA Chiller/Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: After growing up in Chicago, the Oklahoma town of Bixby looks like the definition of nowhere to Jessica Day - if a nowhere with an aeronautics firm where Mom landed a design job. But there's something funny about this place, and not just the odd-tasting water. Every night, at midnight, time freezes... and monsters emerge. As a Midnighter, someone born at the exact right time, Jessica is one of the few teens in Bixby who experiences this secret hour - an hour that appears to exist only in and around the town - but none of the others provoke such a strong reaction from the darklings who lurk there. Is it just because she's new, or is there something special about her, something that may end the eons-old struggle between humanity and darkling once and for all?
REVIEW: The Secret Hour isn't bad, establishing a creepy premise and decent cast. Westerfield creates some nice monsters with the darklings and the lesser slithers, shapeshifting beings that embody humanity's oldest nightmares. The teens each develop distinct personalities, generally with a little more to them than is first apparent, and each with a particular talent that comes alive in the secret hour. The exception here is Jessica Day, the nominal lead. She comes across as the quintessential Teen Heroine, half a step (if that) removed from Mary Sue status, whose initial helplessness and naivete only ensures that she'll somehow be Extra Important later on (no specific spoiler, but come on - I think most readers know the earmarks by now.) There are hints of relationship potential, and some typical high school drama (plus the obligatory family drama and parental issues)... the usual trappings of the age category and genre. Even if the elements hit their marks competently, they're still laid out on a rather well-worn story path that I'm a little tired of treading.
Westerfield's imagery and concepts are fine, and the majority of the cast is intriguing. It just felt a little too familiar, with Jessica being a cookie cutter Special New Girl, for the fourth star in the ratings... especially as I felt no interest in pursuing the series, which appears to be a problem for the first book in a trilogy. (Not that I need another series to follow, but it seems that a first book that fails to sell the second isn't doing something quite right, at least for this reader.)
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