What’s up guys, Taylor Swift is dropping an album called Midnights that has 13 tracks, so like…is there a better time to return to these posts?
So welcome to the conclusion of the Midnighters series, everyone! This event was apparently first celebrated by publishing a cover that vaguely shows what one of the midnighters looks like. I think that’s supposed to be Jessica. She’s looking v. mid-2000s with her three-quarter sleeve hoodie over her long-sleeve shirt, isn’t she?
As far as conclusions go, this book is…fine. This trilogy actually reads more like one long book split up into three: each book picks up right after the last one ends (the entire series only spans about a month), and all the events of the first two books were mostly set-up for the action in this one. On a positive note, this means that all the threads come together in a way that makes sense, and the plot is well-paced enough that this final installment is about the same amount of pages as the other two. (It’s always funny when the third book in a trilogy is a doorstopper compared to the first two, like the author realized they had way more loose ends to tie up than they thought.)
The downside, though, is that the characters don’t really have time to breathe or grow. There’s a bittersweetness to the conclusion of this story, not just because of the actual ending, but also because the dynamic between the midnighters is the most interesting part of the series, and it doesn’t have much emotional payoff.
Nevertheless, let’s see how it all shakes out. Onwards!
As always, let’s first take a look at how these books have evolved over the years. The 2nd edition of the books supposedly featured Jonathan on the cover — the model actually does look like an emo Latino kid I knew in high school, but he’s rather pale considering that Jonathan is explicitly described as having brown skin. The 3rd edition, by contrast, is probably meant to be Rex instead:
I was initially mildly impressed that they stuck with the theme and found a model rocking side-swept bangs post-2012, but it looks like this edition might be from 2011? That feels like a weird amount of reprints, considering the 2nd edition was only released in 2009.
Anyway, the first book took place over two weeks, and the second took place over just one, so it is still September — presumably of 2005, based on the dates from the last book. This means that the midnighters are still over a year away from the release of The Black Parade, RIP. (Just kidding, you know Rex and Melissa think MCR are sellouts because they get played on MTV.) (Dess pretends to go along with them but occasionally gets in her feelings to “The Ghost of You”.)
So Rex had a darkling personality basically implanted into his brain in the last book, and he has not been handling it well. He and Melissa drive to school, and Rex internally rants about how the entire world basically freaks him out now: he can sense new technology everywhere and it’s constantly aggravating his darkling side. He’s having a panic attack just sitting in Melissa’s car, but Melissa manages to calm him down, as she speedran her mindcaster training at the end of the last book and now has almost-full control of her powers. Rex sighs that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be normal again, and Melissa snort[s]. “When were you ever normal, Rex? When were any of us?”
Sorry, that GIF just never stops being relevant. Anyway, as they approach the school, they realize there’s a pep rally going on today. Melissa hates pep rallies because of the amount of people that will be around; Rex isn’t thrilled about being surrounded by meatbags that his darkling half wants to eat, either. Also, on the less-supernatural hand, they’re just like, “Ugh, school spirit is for normies.”
Rex has to grab something from his locker, so they split up. While he’s in the hallway, he’s accosted by “Timmy Hudson”, who was name-checked in the first book but hasn’t been mentioned since. Apparently Timmy used to regularly beat up Rex for his lunch money back in middle school — he mostly leaves him alone now, but he still likes some drive-by bullying when he has time. Timmy throws Rex around and makes fun of his new haircut: since Rex’s hair was burned off during his darkling transformation, he decided to just buzz all of it off instead of continuing to rock the Black Veil Brides look. Timmy snarks that getting rid of his emo hair won’t make everyone forget “what a little pussy [Rex was].” I remember being both shocked and mildly impressed by the use of the word “pussy” in this book when I first read it as a teen — it’s one of those things that real teenagers say (or used to say, idk, I’m old) but frequently gets excised from YA fiction for being too vulgar, so it’s nice to see that realism here. The only way it could’ve been more realistic would be if Timmy called Rex a f*g.
Getting shoved around wakes Rex’s darkling side up, and he tries to keep it under control, but he can’t stop himself from sensing that Timmy is afraid of snakes. He hisses and makes himself look like a snake…somehow…which freaks Timmy out. It freaks Rex out a little that he was able to use his darkling side to see into Timmy’s mind, and that he lost control in the middle of broad daylight. Still, he convinces himself that it’s not a big deal: after all, he finally got Timmy to stop bullying him forever, and it’s not like he literally tore Timmy’s head off and let him bleed out in the hallway, so everything’s totally fine. Rex, this is called the slippery slope.
Over in the gym, Melissa is watching the pep rally, snarking internally about how pathetic and clueless all the basics are. “The football team strutting in Lycra before the crowd[…]The clique of pretty girls clustered together a few rows down, surrounded by a force field of disdain for all the nobodies around them—unaware of how much the nobodies hated them right back.[…]High school wasn’t a trial by fire or some ordeal that had to be survived. It was all a big joke. You just had to provide the laugh track.” Hee. I kept typing up commentary for this bit and deleting it, because nothing I say can make this extreme teenage edgelord paragraph any funnier.
Dess, Jessica, and Jonathan are sitting on the opposite end of the gym, and Melissa reflects on how Dess still isn’t over Melissa forcibly reading her mind in the last book. She’s been avoiding Melissa and Rex ever since; Melissa feels kind of bad about it, but not bad enough to not snark about what an obvious third wheel Dess is next to Jessica and Jonathan. She also gets in some digs about how Jessica and Jonathan are enjoying the pep rally, like — ugh — normies. I’d say, “Never change, Melissa”, but actually it would be nice if Melissa showed character growth at some point. Let’s not hold our breaths, though.
Rex comes back and Melissa’s like, “Oooh, you taste like you almost killed someone,” and Rex says, “…it was a pretty close thing[…]Want to see?” and Melissa’s like, “For sure!” God, these two are so close to burying a body together. Anyway, Rex shows Melissa how he went darkling on Timmy Hudson, and Melissa is a little unnerved that Rex can kind-of sort-of read minds like she can. Oh, sure, now you’re creeped out by him.
The pep rally goes on, and the “gnome-like” principal starts trying to get a football chant going for the upcoming game. The principal bit is, by the way, a little nod to an IRL Bixby High School student’s description of the school in 2005. So…congratulations to whoever was the Bixby High principal in 2005, you’ve been immortalized in a YA book. Anyway, Melissa edgelords some more about how high school is all about herd mentality and kids grouping up into cliques and how she’s way too cool to do the football chant, blah blah sheeple blah. I mean…okay, she’s not wrong, necessarily — of course it’s important to think for yourself, and I think it’s fair that an emo kid in a small, conservative town feels alienated from her peers. At the same time, it’s not a character flaw to care about your community or to enjoy having a shared experience with other people; you’re not a better person because you don’t enjoy The Sportsball or whatever. The book tries to act like Melissa’s less of a serial killer now that she has control of her powers, but she has just as much of a superiority complex here as she did in book one.
The chanting freaks Rex out, because it reminds him of how humans got ready to hunt darklings back in the Iron Age or whenever. Luckily for him, though, it’s suddenly cut off — everything freezes and the blue time comes, even though it’s the middle of the morning.
We switch into Jessica’s POV. All the midnighters run outside to confirm that the midnight moon has risen, though none of them know why. They look to Rex for answers, but he just shrugs that this has never happened before and it’s not in the lore, so he doesn’t know why they’re looking at him. The other midnighters are shocked that the new, half-darkling Rex is no longer a pretentious know-it-all. Heh. Because that’s weirder than him being able to read minds or wanting to eat human flesh.
Jessica reflects that this is the first time all five of them have been within like ten feet of each other ever since the events of the last book — as Melissa alluded to in her chapter, Dess refuses to talk to Rex and Melissa anymore (they don’t even eat the same lunch table! horrors!), so the gang has effectively been split into Rex/Melissa and Dess/Jess/Jonathan. I mean…as it’s always been.
Jessica feels bad that Dess and Rex’s brains are all fucked up and that Melissa has a bunch of facial scars from getting thrown through her windshield — still, she thinks that they’re all being selfish: [E]veryone seemed to have forgotten that Anathea, the young seer who’d been turned into a halfling back in the old days, had died that night. Which was a lot worse than anything that had happened to the rest of them. She’s like, “Can we have some perspective here?” And then, like two paragraphs later, she whines that if the sudden blue time lasts forever, she’ll never get ungrounded. Oh, Jessica.
Jonathan is thrilled that he has more time to fly — you’ll recall that he hates daylight because he’s stuck to the ground, and midnight is the only time he Feels Alive — and he’s bouncing all over the school, all the way onto the roof. Rex yells at him to stop fucking around, since the blue time could end at any minute, and then Jonathan will be stuck up there. Jonathan’s like, “You’re not the boss of me, Rex!”
Jess agrees with Rex, but doesn’t want to say so out loud: [She] wanted to scream at [Jonathan] to quit being stupid, but if she sided with Rex in front of everyone else, Jonathan would probably stay up there until the world ended. Heh. You know, now that I’m thinking about it, Jessica and Rex are actually pretty similar in personality — they’re both kind of anxious and uptight, craving rules and structure, and constantly worrying about things going wrong. They sometimes side with each other over their respective love interests for this reason, which would’ve been an interesting thing for the series to explore more deeply, but of course it doesn’t.
Melissa also tells Jonathan to come down before he gets hurt. Jessica is shocked that Melissa is expressing concern for another human being. Don’t worry, Jess. Melissa will go back to being a misanthrope constantly insulting everyone in a few pages with no explanation.
Dess speculates that the sudden blue time is some kind of scientific wrinkle that they don’t understand — maybe something in midnight aligned to bring this on, like an eclipse. Rex points out that eclipses can be calculated and predicted years in advance, and Melissa says that she can sense the darklings celebrating all over town. Dess suggests that the darklings knew that this was going to happen.
The midnighters all start calling the sudden blue time an “eclipse” after this, so I will too. The eclipse ends suddenly, and Jonathan isn’t able to get down from the roof in time. Jessica has to drag him down using her own body weight, blah blah physics blah. They crash down to earth, injuring Jessica in the process. For some reason, Jess is embarrassed by this and starts beating herself up for trying to help, because clearly Jonathan was FINE and she just looked STUPID trying to save him. Jonathan has to repeatedly reassure her that she did the right thing. I don’t know what the point of this is.
Jonathan admits that he was being pretty dumb, flying around without knowing what was going on, and says he’ll listen to Rex next time this happens. Jessica derps, “Next time?” and Jonathan’s like, “Duh, this is yet another plot development happening after you, the protagonist, have come to town to start this YA series.” Jessica’s like, “Oh.”
After school, the midnighters decide to go to Madeleine’s house — except for Jessica, as she’s still grounded for one more night. She keeps going on about how everyone’s going to have fun without her, and Dess and Jonathan roll their eyes at her dramatics. I’ve mentioned before that I find Jessica’s insecurities to be really relatable — she’s much more sheltered than the other midnighters and often worries that they think she’s lame because she doesn’t want to sneak out of her house or cut class. I was so much like her in high school — right down to wanting the approval of the edgy emo kids even though I was a Taylor Swift-loving square — that it’s a little painful, so I feel kind of personally attacked by how unlikable she’s being right now.
Everyone leaves, and Jessica goes home with her dad and sister. Her sister, Beth, has joined the middle school marching band as a majorette, and Jessica teases her for being a band geek for a few minutes. I love Jessica, but this is a bold move from a girl with no hobbies. Would it have killed Scott Westerfeld to have written one (1) scene of the midnighters doing something non-midnight-related? (There’s a passing mention in book 2 of Dess doing watercolor painting, but not in any particular detail.) Anyway, Beth reminds Jessica that she’s still determined to figure out what Jessica is hiding from her, perhaps at a climactic moment in this very book.
The rest of the midnighters go over to Madeleine’s house. They remind the reader that normies have occasionally fallen into the blue time, in places where the barrier between midnight and the normal world is very thin. Madeleine says that back in the old days when they had daylighter allies, midnighters would sometimes bring them into the blue time to see it for themselves. Weirdly, the daylighters would then become frozen once midnight ended, and they only came back to life when the sun hit them. “Like Anathea. Trapped in midnight,” Rex foreshadows says. Madeleine thinks the abnormal blue time had more holes in it than usual.
Melissa and Madeleine immediately go off to mind-commune about the eclipse, and Rex is all salty and jealous that he’s no longer the only person who gets to see inside Melissa’s brain. Is it that big of a deal, Rex? I’ve read Melissa’s thoughts too, and it’s mostly just her complaining about everyone else. For her part, Dess is bitter that Madeleine basically used her to get to Rex and Melissa, and now spends all her time teaching Rex old lore and training Melissa to mindcast. Again, this is something that would’ve been interesting for the series to explore, but it doesn’t — this book implies that Madeleine’s only real interest is in Rex and Melissa, and she doesn’t care that much about the other midnighters, but we never actually see her spending a real amount of time with anyone but Dess.
(Also, apparently “the sweaty work of protecting Madeleine had been left to Dess, Jessica, and Jonathan. The three had spent hours making a big pile of the least-rusty darkling defenses.” I want this scene so badly. What did the three of them talk about for hours? School? Hurricane Katrina? Paramore’s debut album?)
Anyway, Rex wanders off to do some reading and Dess wanders off to do some math. Jonathan: “Um, I was wondering…does she have a TV?” Hee.
Madeleine eventually remembers that Dess exists and brings her some maps to look at. Dess realizes that the area affected by the secret hour has actually grown over time, and starts theorizing that the blue time is analogous to the universe — it was created with a big bang and is slowly expanding, but one day it’s going to collapse, sucking in a bunch of normies on its way. And that day is now! This realization is punctuated by Jonathan seeing a news report on TV, about one “Cassie Flinders” who disappeared in the neighboring town of Jenks that morning.
The midnighters decide to meet in Jenks and rescue her as soon as midnight falls. Accordingly, Jonathan goes to pick Jessica up before midnight, but Beth is there, trying to bust Jessica sneaking out again. She wibbles that she doesn’t want Jess to get in trouble, but she hates that Jess is hiding things from her. Jessica’s like, “That’s rough buddy” and ditches her anyway. Jonathan promises Beth that he’ll bring Jessica back in exactly eighteen minutes, and Jessica’s like, “Wow, way to make it obvious that midnight is important, Jonathan.” Heh.
On the car ride over, Jessica complains about her family and remarks that Jonathan is lucky that his mom disappeared and that his dad is a deadbeat who doesn’t pay any attention to him. Oh, Jessica. Why are you so unlikable in this book? Of course, Jonathan isn’t being very sensitive himself — he’s thrilled about the possibility of midnight expanding so that he can fly whenever he wants to, and he tries to crack a joke about how Beth won’t bother Jessica if she gets sucked into the blue time and mauled by darklings. Jessica is not amused.
Over in Jenks, the rest of the gang is waiting for them to arrive. We’re treated to a detailed description of how Jenks is a small, impoverished rural town, home to many mesquite trees and thick underbrush and trailer parks and chain smokers. This is of course hilarious considering IRL Jenks is considered one of the nicest Tulsa suburbs (and in fact has a median income higher than Bixby’s). Melissa remarks that she can tell Jessica and Jonathan have been fighting and they all roll their eyes at the preps’ relationship drama. Once again, I am baffled by the way this series continually hints that Jessica and Jonathan are not at all suited for each other, then immediately walks it back and never lets the plot thread go anywhere. Like, if we’re supposed to think that their relationship is going to take the classic high school route of crashing and burning after 3 months, just commit to it.
Anyway, Rex’s darkling side catches Cassie’s scent and starts salivating over the idea of feasting on human flesh. He wanders off into the brush, telling Dess and Melissa that he’s going to get a head start on locating her. Dess and Melissa try to make him stay so they don’t have to be alone together (hee), and Rex briefly considers it: “No one but he could be the leader that the group needed.” Heh. Okay, so he’s still a little bit of a pretentious know-it-all.
The lure of chowing down on an eighth-grader is too strong, though, and he keeps walking against his will. He finds Cassie when midnight falls, hidden away in a cave. He realizes the darklings lured her there and then trapped her so they could eat her later. Said darklings show up, one of which is a massive spider. Rex faces it down and is shocked by two things — one, his crippling fear of spiders has disappeared, and two, the darkling doesn’t immediately try to kill him. Instead, the spider and Rex have a standoff over which one of them gets to nom Cassie first, and Rex realizes that the darklings consider him One of Them now. The darkling tells Rex that he’s on the losing team re: being human and going to high school and all that lame shit; it instead invites Rex to go full darkling and join them for their inevitable world domination: “We will hunt again soon…Winter is coming, halfling. Join us.” Hee! I bet if this series had ever had, you know, any kind of popularity, there would’ve been some kind of Midnighters/Night’s Watch crossover fanfiction written in 2013. Is Rex not just Jon Snow? (And that would make Ygritte…Jessica? Nevermind, this analogy fell apart real fast.)
Anyway, while Rex waffles over whether or not he should give in to his darkling side and cannibalize a preteen, we cut over to Jessica’s POV for the suspense. She and Jonathan manage to find Rex and Cassie, and Jessica scares the darklings away with her flashlight. The white light also manages to snap Rex out of it, and he thanks Jessica for clearing his head. She’s like, “From what?” and he’s like, “Stop asking questions.”
Cassie is of course completely confused, so Jessica tries to convince her that none of this is real: “This is a pretty crappy dream, huh?” she asks. Cassie immediately points out that in dreams, people don’t usually mention that she’s dreaming. Heh. Rex remarks that Cassie is “smarter than that” to which Jessica asks,“What’s that supposed to mean? I thought the blue time was all a dream, remember?” Rex cackles and is like, “Oh, right.” Man. This book is not kind to Jessica.
Melissa and Dess finally show up. (“Melissa came into view, yanking on her long black dress, the hem of which was tangled with twigs and trailing branches.” GIRL, YOU ARE FIGHTING DEMONS IN THE DESERT. WOULD IT KILL YOU TO WEAR PANTS?*) Melissa and Rex have an exchange of half-sentences and raised eyebrows about Rex nearly eating Cassie, and the other midnighters are like, “Are you going to explain to the rest of us what’s going on?” and Rex and Melissa are like, “Stop asking questions.”
*I find it interesting, generally, that Melissa and Dess are both posited as less girly and frivolous than Jessica, but are much more feminine in dress — they’re both described as wearing dresses and skirts constantly, while the few descriptions of Jessica’s normal clothes always have her in jeans and a sweatshirt. I don’t think this is inconsistent characterization or anything; it’s true that personality-wise, Jessica is a lot softer than the other two girls — it’s just always mildly intrigued me that Dess and Melissa often snark on the normies as though they’re above them, and the narration often encourages the reader to agree, but the very fact that they have an ~aesthetic~ they commit to makes them more concerned with outward appearances than someone like Jessica. Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Rex and Melissa bring up mindcasting Cassie all casual, so that she doesn’t start blabbing about midnight to God and everybody. The other midnighters are like, “No offense, but Melissa’s track record on not causing permanent brain damage is like…not great.” Melissa’s like, “Well, I’m not going to invade her brain while she’s awake, I’m not a monster.” She plans to just slightly fudge Cassie’s memories tonight, then return the next night to fully mind wipe her. Jessica still thinks that this is perhaps morally wrong of them, but she doesn’t actually say anything because she is a cowardly custard.
However, she decides to be rebellious in one sense, and tells Jonathan she’d rather go flying than go home and face Beth. She remarks that she’ll risk getting in trouble with her parents and the cops. Edgy! She’s going to graduate from listening to Avril Lavigne to listening to Evanescence soon.
Jonathan takes Jessica to the Arkansas River. Jessica starts getting anxious that if the blue time really does collapse and pull the entire world in, then they’re basically going to be in a post-apocalyptic hellscape where they can’t even make fire, and of the 6 billion people on the planet, only the 5 of them know how to use steel and 13-letter words to defend themselves. Jonathan’s like, “Yeah…that sucks for everyone else.”
Apparently they don’t discuss the impending apocalypse any further, because we cut to the next morning, wherein Jessica thinks about how she and Jonathan swam around and made out until about 2 AM and it was awesome. Er…I only saw a small part of the river in Tulsa, but it didn’t look very safe to swim in. Tulsa’s River Parks also do not recommend swimming. Also, there’s a brief mention in the last chapter about how Jonathan left his car in Jenks, so I don’t know how on earth they got home. Did they walk? In suburban Oklahoma?
(I know, I know, picking on this book for being inaccurate about its location is just bullying at this point.)
Beth chooses not to blow up Jessica’s spot, but warns Jessica that she’s still watching her. Jessica internally snipes that the world as they know it is about to end sometime within this book, so what is Beth going to do, get her grounded again? Edgy x2! She’s graduating from Evanescence to Nightwish, guys.
(By the way, it just occurred to me, but is Beth’s name short for Elizabeth? Therefore making the Day sisters Jessica and Elizabeth, like the twins from Sweet Valley High? I’d love to see that crossover.)
That night, Rex and Melissa go back to Cassie’s house to mindcast her. They have a discussion about having to save people from the blue time that segues into a reminder of how Rex and Melissa met:
[Rex] relaxed, took a breath. “Well, you rescued me.”
She smiled. The great thing about Rex was, he’d never forgotten the night she’d walked across Bixby to find him, back when they were kids. Even after all these years, all the mistakes they’d made, he was still that eight-year-old, forever grateful to her for showing him that the blue time was real.
I can never tell whether that’s a sweet line, implying that Melissa has a conscience and genuinely appreciates Rex standing by her after she made his dad senile; or whether it’s a creepy implication that Rex is so grateful to Melissa for saving him that he’s willing to overlook how unconcerned she is with everyone else’s humanity. You decide!
Anyway, Rex and Melissa decide to kill time by making out, as teenagers do. Rex accidentally bites Melissa’s lip and draws blood, and all the emo girls swoon. He feels bad, but Melissa tells him, “I had some spooky stuff in me too the first few times we touched. Remember?” She did? If only any of that spooky stuff had ever been, like, described to the reader during those scenes.
Rex reveals the reason he’s acting weird tonight: he received a letter from Angie, she of helping to kidnap teenagers and leave them in the desert to be turned into eldritch abominations. According to the letter, after the failed halfling creation, the Grayfoots cut Angie out of the loop. Now they seem to be panicking about something, but she doesn’t know what, so she wants to meet up with Rex and talk it out. Rex says he’s not planning on meeting up with Angie — but her note did give him an idea about trying to find out more about the mysterious eclipses. He wants to go out to the desert and talk directly with the darklings, to which Melissa immediately is like, “That is the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” Rex reminds her that the darklings think of him as one of them now: “Wolves don’t eat other wolves.”, to which Melissa says, “Um, Rex?…I’m pretty sure wolves kill other wolves.” Heh. Rex is like, “Okay, point.” Still, he isn’t deterred from the idea, and he makes Melissa promise not to try and stop him. Melissa agrees, thinking about how she’ll never, ever twist a thought in Rex’s brain because it’s wrong. (But, you know, it’s okay if she does it to other people. I swear.)
Midnight falls, and Rex and Melissa take a moment to stop by what they call “the rip” — the place where midnight is starting to break down and where Cassie fell into the blue time. Here, the secret hour is red instead of blue, and they can see leaves falling in the rip instead of being frozen. File that away for later.
Melissa goes to mindcast Cassie and marvels at how easy it is now that she’s been trained. She and Rex note that Cassie is something of an artist, and Rex repeatedly, sensibly points out that Cassie might’ve drawn a picture of the darklings or the midnighters. He suggests that they take like two extra minutes to look through Cassie’s room or check her family’s memories, but Melissa blows him off for contrivance purposes.
Up next: You’ll be shocked to find out that 1) they totally did not successfully wipe Cassie’s mind, 2) Rex totally breaks his promise and meets Angie, and 3) despite the impending apocalypse, Jessica is still whining about Jonathan not holding her hand. CAN YOU FOCUS.
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