Burning Midnight
Will McIntosh
David Sully is a usual teenage boy. In his modern world, the economy rides on spheres. Spheres can make you smarter, or taller, or have nice teeth, or give you supersonic hearing. He’s been successful before, but having been burnt once by the resident sphere millionaire buyer, he’s reluctant to trust anyone. When Hunter comes along, the whole spectrum of spheres is going to shift…
This innovative magic system – I could have had more! The basis was spheres – burn a Ruby Red one, have straight teeth, or Aqua ones so that you can sleep whenever you need. The price point is all you need to worry about to do. In the manner of Brandon Sanderson, I wished there had been an index at the end of the novel to remind me what each of the spheres burned did to each person. Then I could have flipped back and forth as I wanted.
They have to be super sneaky and smart to survive, but sometimes they are just plain stupid! Hunter was the highlight for me, because she was so pigheaded all the time, and seems to still get there in the end. Unlike Sully, who once burnt, becomes a suspicious bastard. The Spheres had been around for around 5 years, and hunting them is what makes a living for Sully and Hunter. Sully has created a second wave, and the new ones are something special again. And that makes the whole premise of this novel.
Yes, yes, there’s romance in this novel. It was inevitable. You can’t have teenage fiction without it it seems. Hunter did the usual ‘I’m not girlfriend material speech’, and Sully did his ‘I don’t care, you’re so hot, mighty sphere hunter’. And didn’t everything work out very interestingly, and not so straight forward and good? Yes, yes it did.
Burning midnight drove me absolutely up the wall with really wanting to read it. Worst of all, I had to stop about 10 pages from the end and do some other things in the mean time, and that was just cruel! I’d recommend this novel without reservation to any teenager who enjoys an action packed time.
The ending could have frustrated me, but actually I thought it left me feeling quite satisfied, despite it ending a little abruptly. Some other reviews I have read suggest it needs a sequel, but it’s not at all clear where that would go. For me, it was very satisfying and I think it’s going to give you a couple of really good hours of reading.
I’m not really sure how I feel about this novel. I didn’t really get into the psyche of the characters. I couldn’t keep the boys straight at all to start off with, and although I liked Blue, I just didn’t get along with her. I couldn’t feel anything with her – no fear, no nothing. If anything, they were all too cool. Even when they were in danger, they hardly seemed to care. I didn’t care if they were going to die or not, which isn’t a good sign.
This is the sequel to Just One Night. But I didn’t know that when I picked it up to read it (or otherwise I probably wouldn’t have started it at all). It reads perfectly well as a stand-alone, which is good enough for me with the waiting-line of other novels I want to read!
The twists and turns in this novel, both in time and perspective, made my head spin. Helen holds onto herself with difficulty, and you can really feel that happening. It’s nicely balanced between inaudible ramblings inside her mind, and outer thoughts that she can’t keep in. Not to mention how she interacts with other people.
Ah! The twists! Ah! The turns! Ah! The betrayal! Ah! The suspense! Loved it. I really can’t tell you more about the plot without ruining some things that go one, but please go and get a copy to find out for yourself.
Thomas and Charlotte are nicely characterised, and the novel pretty much jump starts itself. I felt like I was feeling every step in the wood, and every single thing Thomas was feeling/thinking/saying. There was a hint of sexual humour, but also thoughtfulness and kindness in there. There was just a few things that bothered me…
Ellis is a tortured soul who is only trumped by Vada’s nightmares. Vada is the protagonist, and we see everything from her perspective. What wasn’t obvious to me was why Ellis pulled away after the accident. The blurb is misleading for sure. Just ignore the comments there, and jump into the novel.
For the first chapter of George you don’t actually know what’s happening in the story. George could be a girl or a boy’s name. Instinctively the problem is that 
This is the finale of The Obernewtyn Chronicles. It was originally intended to be 5 books, it extended to 6, and then 7. The 7th book in particular was delayed several times. I expected it to be polished and beautiful, and for the most part it was. Having just read the other 6 books though, I could see plot holes and unfinished business. Also Elspeth spent a lot of time ‘gnawing’, relaxing, ‘gnawing’, relaxing. It got a bit repetitive.
The novel breaks open with a bang, and continues along at a relatively fast pace. This is interspersed with confused love scenes and meaty blood letting. And of course, depictions of friendships that can rise and break in a moment. Don’t think it’s just love and games in their boat, there’s more than that going on.