Midnighters #3: Blue Noon (Part Three)

Previously on Midnighters: Blue Noon: Rex continues to lose friends and alienate people, we find out that the past generation of midnighters had the political opinions you’d expect from 1950s Oklahoma, and Melissa had exactly one (1) moment of self-awareness.

For the first time in three books, we get a scene of Jonathan at his house. Are we going to perhaps get a glimpse at his family life and his relationship with his only parent? A scene showing any other interests he has apart from midnight and physics class?

No, of course not. Jonathan is just staring out his window, thinking about how awesome midnight is and how he secretly is excited for the apocalypse so that he can go flying all the time. God, there’s something really bleak about Jonathan’s character, even moreso than the rest of the midnighters. The book just keeps hammering in the fact that he’s only happy one hour of the day, and as an adult, I find it extra sad because an hour really feels like less and less time the older you get (I’m not even awake at midnight during the work week anymore). Since none of the midnighters have any outside interests or goals, there’s this implication that Jonathan’s never going to grow up and find fulfillment in the other 24 hours of his life, and it’s just…really depressing.

Jonathan muses that he knows the world ending is bad, but the trade off is that he gets to fly whenever he wants so…like…is it so wrong to hope that the blue time never ends and all the helpless normies (including his own father) are at the mercy of the darklings forever? Jesus Christ, Jonathan, have some perspective.

Midnight arrives, and he bounds off to Madeleine’s house, where the midnighters are meeting. Rex tells them that he knows why Samhain is important, leading Dess to remark, “So that goth holiday is the real thing, huh?” And thus, the greatest exchange in the history of Western literature ensues:

ILU Dess.

Rex explains further that cultures all over the world have traditionally had festivals around the start of winter, often celebrations — and yet, winter is the darkest part of the year when nothing is growing. What’s there to celebrate? IDK, Rex, maybe the ancient Celts were into goth shit too. He tells the midnighters that one Samhain long ago, the darklings disappeared for good, and the festival stopped being about warding off darkness and turned into a party celebrating their downfall. And that’s why we celebrate Halloween today, in the Midnighters verse. Sure, why not.

Rex says that this Halloween — or, more accurately, at midnight on November 1 — the turns are going to table, and the blue time is going to last a whole twenty-five hours, expanding and letting the darklings nom on everyone who lives in the Tulsa metro area. Unless the midnighters find a way to stop it, the tear’s going to keep growing bigger, with an ever-increasing area experiencing a long midnight every year. Jonathan’s like, “Nice. I mean…that sounds bad.”

Rex doesn’t think they can stop it on their own, and says they’re going to have to give up keeping midnight a secret in order to each all the normies how to defend themselves. Then he tells the midnighters that they’re going to have to meet at the rip in Jenks to do some experiments, at 6 in the morning. Dess and Jonathan crack some jokes about not wanting to get up that early, and Rex flips his shit and starts hissing that WINTER IS COMING and IN THE GAME OF MIDNIGHT, YOU WIN OR YOU DIE. “They’re coming for you, don’t you see?” he snarls.

All the midnighters are like, “Awkward” and peace out after agreeing to meet in the morning. Jessica and Jonathan fly off together. Jessica points out that Rex said the darklings are coming for them, not him. Jonathan agrees that Rex is only getting increasingly weirder, but then skates on over that and just tells Jessica that even if the darklings take over the world and Rex joins them and tries to “take” Jess, she and Jonathan will fly off and everything will be fine. Jonathan, I am begging you to care a little more about this. Also…I guess it’s realistic that instead of trying to help Rex, his friends are just awkwardly distancing themselves while talking about how weird he’s becoming behind his back (haha story of my high school years amirite) (:/), but it doesn’t really make for a compelling ensemble story.

Jonathan and Jessica make their way to the building downtown that has a giant light-up Pegasus horse on the top, which is where they kissed back in book one. Jessica remembers this and tries to nudge Jonathan all like, “We had some pretty good times up here, right? Just you and me, right?” and Jonathan derps, “Yeah, we spent a lot of time hiding from the darklings here before we figured out your power.” Heh. Jessica is all hurt that Jonathan doesn’t remember their first kiss and they have a needless argument about how Jonathan hardly ever touches her/holds her hand/makes out with her in public. This is the exact same argument they have had in every single book, and no, it does not build up to anything or get resolved in this book, either. I have no idea why this, of all things, is a running plot thread.

Once again, Jessica and Jonathan’s argument peters out without them ever actually resolving why they’re upset. Once again, Jonathan tells Jess that they’ll be fine even if the rest of the human population is lunch meat. I guess Jessica realizes that it’s futile to keep trying to convince Jonathan that the end of world is a bad thing, because she just shrugs and they make out.

The next morning, the midnighters gather in Jenks at 6:30 AM, as promised. Rex and Melissa show up in his mother’s Mary Kay pink Cadillac. (I think the series mentioned Rex’s mom selling Mary Kay once before, but I skipped over it. Anyway, I do think it’s a nice detail that adds to the subtle picture we’ve gotten of Rex’s background as conservative and working-class.) Jonathan makes a “Ding-dong!” joke and Melissa says, “That’s Avon, actually.” I was about to mock them for knowing way more about old-lady MLM makeup companies than my friends and I did at 16, then I realized they probably know about Avon from Edward Scissorhands. I bet Rex and Melissa rented that movie in middle school and it directly kickstarted their emo phase.

Rex says that he pulled out his mom’s starter cable, so she left the car with him because God forbid she spend any longer with her son than necessary. All the midnighters are impressed that Rex knows what a starter cable is, as am I, since at no point was Rex mentioned to have an affinity for cars. (There’s a brief mention of his backyard being full of car parts in book two; I guess the implication is that his dad worked with cars, but it’s not more than an implication.)

Anyway, another eclipse hits, and Melissa drives the Cadillac through the rip. The midnighters are shocked to see that although it turns off, its momentum keeps it going and it doesn’t freeze the way most things do in the blue time. Rex tells them that they came here to test his theory that the first law of motion still applies in the long midnight, and more to the point, that Jessica’s flame-bringing takes on a new significance now. He asks Jess to light a candle and step away, revealing that the flame doesn’t go out once Jessica stops touching it. This means that once a fire is lit, people can spread it to each other and fight off the darklings on their own. Then Rex says maybe this is why fate brought Jessica here to Bixby — or maybe why Jessica was even born to begin with — and it’s kind of existential and weird. I don’t know, maybe I just want this book to be something it’s not — but much like The Silent Spy, pondering the purpose of Jessica’s existence and how the long midnight could affect all 6 billion people in the world makes the scope of the book just feel too…large. When you add in the lack of character and relationship development, it makes the story feel kind of empty and unfulfilling, which is frustrating because there’s so much potential.

Jonathan points out that there’s no way they can gather the entire town to save everyone, and Rex calmly says that they’ll do what they can, but some people are going to die. All the midnighters are weirded out by how chill he is about this. Nevertheless, Rex has the idea to set off a bunch of fireworks, which will wake everyone up, hopefully draw them all to wherever the fireworks are being set off, and also drive the darklings away from the white light.

This all sounds like a decent plan, but as it turns out, there’s still a missing piece of the puzzle…somehow. Rex tells Dess that, via the darklings, he knows more secret stuff about the eclipses and the rip, but he doesn’t know how to express it in words. However, he did pass it on to Melissa telepathically, so she can touch Dess to give the information to her. Dess is of course still all traumatized from Melissa forcibly touching her, but Rex and Melissa just guilt-trip her until she gives in. Dess kind of gets sidelined in this book tbh; there’s not much exploration of the fallout from Melissa touching her; we’re told that she doesn’t hang out with Rex and Melissa anymore, but she doesn’t treat them much differently than she ever did, either.

Anyway, Dess begrudgingly lets Melissa touch her again, and realizes that the rip is expanding quite literally like a rip — in a long, thin line, like a highway that will connect Bixby to the deep desert where the darklings live. She muses that if the rip keeps expanding every Halloween, eventually cities like Nashville and Las Vegas will get swallowed by the blue time, giving the darklings tons of meatbags to feast on every year. Dess gets the idea to set up another fireworks display in Jenks, to hopefully bottleneck the darklings on their way into Bixby. So…it sucks to live in Jenks, then.

The midnighters proceed to spend all of the following midnights breaking into every fireworks stand and hardware store in Bixby, stealing everything that isn’t nailed down. Since time is frozen, they aren’t particularly worried about being stealth: Noises came from inside the hardware store, the clattering of falling metal and a million small things spilling. “Jesus, Flyboy,” Dess yelled in through the window. “It’s good you’re not a real burglar.”

If you’re thinking that line sounds familiar, it’s because a near-identical line of dialogue appeared in book two, when Rex and Melissa break into Constanza’s house: When [Rex] blindly planted his foot in a sink full of dirty dishes, the clatter echoed throughout the house. “Christ, Rex,” Melissa said from behind him. “It’s lucky you’re not a real burglar. You could wake the dead.”

I might normally think this was a clever call-back or something, but to be completely honest, these books can get a little fast and loose with their details and continuity, so I’m not sure this was intentional. (See also: Jonathan being from Philadelphia and then Pittsburgh; the name of Dess’s spear, Magisterially Supernumerary Mathematician, also changes a couple of times.)

Anyway, they go through the store, stealing supplies. Dess is cutely, gleefully excited about making a bomb: “Hey, check this out,” Dess said…”Formerly a lowly paint can. But in its new incarnation, it will be a major explosive device.” ILU Dess (x2).

Jessica has been spending the night with Constanza before she bails for LA, so after they’re done burglarizing the place, Jonathan flies her back to Constanza’s house. Jess thinks that she already had to say so many goodbyes when she left Chicago for Bixby, and she’s all emo over losing Constanza too. Jonathan’s like, “Yeah…that sucks bro.”

After midnight ends, Jessica and Constanza finish packing and talk about Constanza leaving. Constanza blows off any concern about her parents — after all, she can call whenever she wants to talk to them, it’s not like it’s the end of the world! Ha ha, irony, get it? This just makes Jessica even more emo, and Constanza comforts her and tells her that in a way, her and Jessica’s friendship was more meaningful because of how short-lived and intense it was. Then she brushes Jessica’s hair out of her face and wipes a tear off her cheek. Hey, back off, Constanza! There’s only room for one friendship with romantic undertones in Jessica’s life, and Dess is not vacating that spot.

We then cut to Halloween evening, around 6 PM. That was fast. Beth announces that she’s going to spend Halloween with Cassie in Jenks, which means that she’ll there when midnight falls and the darklings invade. Jessica freaks out, but of course she has no way to justify not letting Beth go. She briefly considers pulling a Rex and yanking out her dad’s starter cable, but she didn’t actually know what starter cables looked like and wasn’t a hundred percent sure she could even get the hood open. ILU Jessica. It starts raining outside, and Jessica’s dad casually mentions that a big storm is going to roll in around midnight. Jessica realizes that, in all of their planning, none of the midnighters considered it might rain. Hee.

We speed forward to around 11-ish, when Jonathan and Melissa swing by to pick Jessica up. That was fast (x2). No idea what any of them were doing in the intervening 5 hours. Jessica tells them that Beth has gone out to Jenks and wants to speed over there right away, but they end up getting delayed because the cops are out, looking for troublemakers. (Hey, they name-drop Sheriff St. Claire! We haven’t heard about him since book one!)

Meanwhile, Rex and Dess have gone to set off the fireworks. Rex is not pleased to realize that it’s raining, and Dess is all annoyed that he didn’t cover the fireworks, because the weather report’s been predicting rain all week. I mean…and you didn’t think to mention this either, Dess? I swear. Anyway, they stashed the fireworks on the roof of a building, but when they come back, the door to the roof is locked. Rex absolutely loses his shit and starts channeling his darkling side to kick the door down. “Inside his cowboy boot Rex’s foot stung, but he ignored the pain.” I’m sorry, what? Every description we’ve ever gotten of Rex indicates that he’s some mid-2000s mall goth stomping around in Docs and Matrix-esque leather jackets, and he’s actually been channeling his inner country boy this entire time?? I NEED CLOSURE ON THIS.

Dess just kind of stands back and watches Rex thrash against the door for a while like, “Awkward,” but nevertheless, he manages to break it down and they rescue the fireworks. There’s some kerfuffle over needing to shorten the fuse because the bomb won’t go off before midnight, but it’s over in about two pages and they manage to set it off. Midnight falls, and Dess and Rex see that the Pegasus sculpture is illuminated — a bolt of lightning has touched down near the roof, right at midnight. The sight triggers something in Rex, and the last of the darklings’ mental block falls away. He realizes that their fireworks won’t stop the darklings, and they need Jessica to do…something with the lightning in order to stop the apocalypse. He sends a mind message to Melissa, telling her “I need you now.” Er…maybe you should tell her that you need Jessica? You know, to prevent miscommunication?

Over in Jenks: Melissa hears Rex’s call, but has no idea what he wants. What did I just say? Anyway, she, Jonathan, and Jessica are busy looking for Beth. Jessica is fretting that they have no way of finding her, and to calm her down, Melissa admits that she’s familiar with Beth’s mind-taste. Jessica realizes that Melissa means that she’s been to the Day house to mindcast her family and of course she’s furious. Jonathan also doesn’t want to leave Jess to go find Rex; some arguing ensues but then they all realize they’re wasting time so they shut up.

Melissa pinpoints Beth and realizes that she and Cassie went back to the cave where Cassie was hidden during the eclipse. She’s surprised Cassie remembers it, and Jessica says, “Maybe she drew a picture of it.” Melissa thinks to herself that she “hadn’t thought to check for that.” What? Melissa, Rex pointed this out to you, and you blew him off! I WAS THERE! READING YOUR NARRATION! Anyway, Jessica goes off on her own, leaving Melissa a lit hurricane lamp to use on the fireworks. For a moment, Melissa is kind of sweetly impressed that she can use fire in the long midnight, but once again, it lasts for about two pages before trouble strikes again. She senses the darklings come upon a guy camping out in the badlands; he’s naturally defenseless and they eat him alive. It’s very visceral and gross, so well done. Melissa understandably freaks out and starts stumbling around and doubling over; in her frenzy, she drops the torch and accidentally sets off some of the fireworks too early. She manages to put the fire out, but puts out the lamp in the process too, so now she doesn’t have any fire at all.

Jonathan meets up with Rex and Dess. Rex is pissed that Jonathan didn’t bring Jessica: Rex let out a half-animal howl, his hands twisting into claws. Dess looked up from where she knelt inside her thirteen-sided arrangement of fireworks and shrugged. “He wanted you to bring Jessica.” Hee. Rex says that he’ll just go back to Jenks with Jonathan. Man, way to just ditch Dess, guys. Also, you’d think that the long midnight would’ve been more of an opportunity for her to shine, since she was pretty much the designated action girl before Jessica showed up, but we never get a scene showing us what she’s doing on the roof all night.

So Rex and Jonathan fly off, Jonathan asking questions all the way and Rex refusing to answer them. Heh.

Meanwhile, Jessica finds Beth and Cassie. She fights off the darklings surrounding them and tries to get Beth and Cassie to leave, but they insist on knowing the truth first. Jessica finally cracks and tells Beth about midnight, and the sisters make up. Then Rex and Jonathan show up, and Beth is like, “Your boyfriend can fly?” Heh. Rex tells Jessica that they can stop the entire long midnight if she puts her hand in the bolt of lightning striking downtown. Jessica’s like, “This is kind of a huge request for you drop on me out of nowhere, can you at least explain how it works?” and Rex says, “I can’t explain how I know this because we only have three chapters left in the book.” Maybe not that last part. Jessica reflects that she knows she can trust Rex — not because they’ve built trust between each other over the course of their adventures together, or because Rex has come into his own as a leader, but because she figures he wouldn’t do anything that would risk Melissa getting killed. I bet that makes the other midnighters feel great. Anyway, she agrees to go put her hand in the lightning, leaving Rex and Melissa to save Beth and Cassie. Uh…see the previous sentence, re: “Rex is interested in saving his goth gf and his goth gf only.”

Rex manages not to nom Cassie and Beth again as they leave the cave, and they eventually run into Melissa. More fighting ensues; a darkling nearly kills Melissa and Rex goes feral fighting it because of the Power of Love, and then when the fight’s over, he manages not to eat Melissa also because of the Power of Love. Eh. I was never very invested in this part of the book, tbh — I mean, it’s action-packed and the action is technically written well, but again, there hasn’t been much actually going on with the characters, so the fight scenes aren’t much more than…literal action. The physical obstacles the midnighters overcome don’t mirror any of their internal obstacles or require the midnighters to resolve any of their inner conflicts. Even the moments where Rex forces his darkling side back down aren’t very new or exciting — yeah, yeah, he and Melissa would never hurt each other, the audience has known that since pretty much the first book; we also already saw him tamp down on his murderous urges long enough to help Cassie at the start of this book, so it’s not hugely impressive that he does it again here. It would’ve been more interesting to see him work with the other midnighters, either fully embracing or rejecting his role as their leader. It would’ve been interesting to see Jonathan’s POV as he put aside his desire to fly to help the normies, or maybe by helping normies, he would realize that there are parts of daylight worth living for, too. It would’ve been nice to see Dess, idk, do literally anything during the long midnight. The only part that feels kind of cathartic is Jess finally making up with her sister, but even that is over in about two pages (like most other moments in this last third of the book).

Anyway. Jessica and Jonathan fly back downtown. They run into some darklings, who briefly manage to get in their heads and fill them with nightmares. Jonathan panics because he thinks he’s lost Jessica, and Jess realizes that dropping her is his greatest fear. Jessica felt a smile spread across her face. “That is so sweet!” And…I guess that’s the resolution to the whole “Jess is insecure because Jonathan never holds her hand” subplot?

They make it downtown and bounce past Dess, who’s skeptical of the lightning idea, but then she’s like, “Whatever, there aren’t enough pages left in the chapter for me to argue.” Jess and Jonathan race up to the lightning bolt, and Jessica briefly worries about electrocuting herself, but then she’s like, “There also aren’t enough pages left in the chapter for me to think about this too much.” She sticks her hand into the lightning, using her flame-bringing power to release it. The imagery here — girl on a rooftop making a decision to collide with lightning as the climactic finale battle rages around her — is very reminiscent of “The Gift“, if you want another example of the Buffy influence on this series. Also reminiscent of “The Gift” is what happens to Jess: she releases the lightning, ending the long midnight and saving everyone, but as midnight ends, she feels herself fading away.

We cut to two weeks later. Jonathan, Dess, and Melissa gather to drive to Jessica’s house, obliquely commenting on everything that’s happened without giving away the reveal yet. As with all urban fantasy series, all the normies have collectively decided not to question the masquerade breaking right in front of them, and life in Bixby has mostly gone back to normal. Melissa reflects that she hasn’t mindcasted her parents in a while, since Rex is all anti-mindcasting now, so they’re starting to ask uncomfortable questions like, “Why haven’t we had a real conversation with you in 16 years?” and “Wtf happened to your car?” She and Jonathan are deciding to bail out of town — her to avoid having a relationship with her parents, and Jonathan because of “what happened” to Jessica. They vaguely refer to Jessica’s parents waiting for news, but possibly moving away because the grief is too much.

At the Day house, they pick up Beth and drive her out to Jenks. The rip in Jenks is fading, but is still there, so they manage to bring Beth into the blue time when midnight falls. There, we find out that Jessica is trapped inside midnight and now only exists during the secret hour. As far as her parents know, she disappeared on Halloween and hasn’t been heard from since. That’s…depressing. Beth and Jess cry and hug it out, and Jess tells Beth that she’s leaving with Jonathan and Melissa to travel the world and find new midnighters. When she unleashed the lightning, it unlocked the secret hour all over the world, so now there are tons of Potentials baby midnighters that they have to find and train.

I mean…okay…but I don’t know how they’re meant to be traveling together when Jessica only exists for the one hour when cars don’t work. Even if we assume she can use her power to drive a car — which I don’t think she can, since her presence in a car didn’t stop it from freezing in book two — an hour a day is still not very efficient for a cross-country road trip. Whatever.

Meanwhile, Rex hasn’t gone along with the rest of them, as he’s taken it upon himself to care for Madeleine. He’s not overly fussed about Jessica being stuck in the blue time, possibly forever — “There were bigger issues to consider.” He’s also struck up a correspondence with Angie, and he’s super pumped to discuss archaeology and shit with her. Rex, can you care at least a little that your classmate threw herself into a bolt of lighting for you? He doesn’t even feel like…remotely conflicted about giving Jessica the order to touch the lightning? (He’s sad that Melissa’s leaving, though. Priorities.) Anyway, he goes to see Madeleine, and she’s recovered enough of her senses to be smug that she was able to summon Jessica to Bixby, and then she and Rex are both smug together that Rex’s gang of midnighters saved the town. Rex reflects that his darkling side is under control now — somehow — and that Perhaps Melissa was right, and it was tending to his father and an old woman that had kept him sane all along. His cares kept him human. Not that we’ve seen him take care of either of them in this entire book. Anyway, as much as he wants to leave with Melissa, he decides that he has to stay and watch over Madeleine and his father. Oh, and keep Dess company. Heh. Don’t do her any favors, Rex.

Back in Jenks, Jonathan and Dess take a walk. Jonathan is all emo over only seeing Jess once a day, and Dess is like, “Yeah, and she only ages one day every month, so your relationship is going to be real gross in about 10 years.” I mean…maybe Jessica will escape the blue time, if you guys look for ways to help her? Are we considering that possibility? No? Okay. Instead, Dess just thinks about how awesome it will be to map out the expanded secret hour and hopefully meet other polymaths.

Melissa rocks up and apologizes for forcibly touching Dess in book two, but then just like in book two, she walks her apology back like, “But it was for the greater good, so I’m not that sorry.” I don’t know why we’re doing this again if Melissa hasn’t actually changed her attitude about what she did.

Dess gets the closing comments of the book: she remarks that she doesn’t know why lighting just so happened to hit Bixby on Samhain, but some things will never make sense, and that’s okay. Then, despite admitting that math isn’t the answer to everything, Dess thinks that her math powers are the best of all — she doesn’t care about Rex’s lore and how it’s full of lies; math will never let you down. And now that the midnighters are splitting up, soon she’ll be able to be awesome on her own instead of being dragged down by those other nerds. On its own, it’s pretty well-written, and there’s something cathartic about the theme of not forcing things to make sense and embracing yourself and the cards you’ve been dealt. That said, I don’t know what it really has to do with the general plot of the series. For a series that claims to be about colonization, the final message of “history is contradictory and full of lies, so let’s just disregard it (instead of trying to understand what really happened and why people did the things they did)” is kind of dissonant.

This ending is also just depressing, and not necessarily because it’s effectively emotional. As I’ve mentioned before, maybe I just want this series to be something it’s not, but…the lack of resolution and closure among the character bums me out. The midnighters themselves are by far the most interesting part of the series — the conflicts between their personalities and backgrounds, the way they are bound together and feel connected by their secret regardless. Splitting up without ever coming to care much about each other is just…not really how I wanted their dynamics to play out. (I just want everyone to get along and bake a cake of rainbows and smiles and we’d all be happy!!!!) Jessica’s story, in particular, feels particularly sad. Apart from Jonathan, none of the midnighters feel any kind of way about what happened to her, and none of them even entertain the thought of trying to help her. It makes Jessica’s situation seem rather final, despite the “and the adventure continues” ending.

This is also, by the way, the first of three (four if you count co-writing) series that Scott Westerfeld has ended with teenagers running away and traveling the world, apparently unconcerned with going to college, earning money, or staying in touch with their parents. I guess it’s justified in his futuristic dystopia series, but still, idk what closure or graduating high school ever did to him.