New Series! By One of My Favorite Authors!

OMFG (Oh My Fred and George) Scott Westerfield is awesome! We all know him as the genius who wrote the Uglies series, but one of his nont-so-well-know series is the Midnighters series. I got the first book, The Secret Hour, from my school library to read over break, and wow, was it good!
It probably seemed even creepier to me because I read the majority of it at like eleven o'clock last night after swim practice and nobody was awake and it was really dark and my dog kept barking in her sleep, so all in all there was some definiter creepy vibes going on while I was reading.
The whole idea the book is based around is really cool and unique, though: basically there are actually twenty-FIVE hours in a day, not twenty-four like we all thought there were, and only certain people get to live in that 25th hour... those who were born at the stroke of midnight on the dot. They call themselves the Midnighters, and for an hour the world freezes for all of us nonmidnighters and they get to live in a special hour while time is seemingly stopped. So this is what a basic scenario in midnight-land is, from the point of view of the newest midnighter, Jessica:

"A raindrop hovered right in front of her nose. Jessica leaned nearer, closing one eye and peering into the little sphere of motionless water. The houses on the street, the arrested ksy, and the wholw world was there inside, upside down and warped into a circle, like looking through a crystal ball. Then she must have gotten too close-- the raindrop shivered and jumped into motion, falling onto her cheek and running down it like a cold tear."
(pg. 25)

Doesn't that seem amazing? So beautiful and pristine and clear, but at the same time like something out of the Twilight Zone.
The only thing is, just like humans live in 24 hours of the day, there are certain creatures that live in the other hour that humans miss out on; these are known as darklings, and they are BAD NEWS. They used to hunt humans way back in BC times when the day was 25 hours for everyone, but now they just kind of deal with the midnighters and are only a nuisance, like spiders. Until Jessica Day discovers she is a Midnighter. Then the darklings become surprisingly hostile. And it's up to the other Midnighters to figure out: why do the darklings want Jessica dead so bad?
Yes, there are other Midnighters. Jessica first meets Rex, Dess, and Melissa when she moves to Bixby, Oklahoma and discovers the new midnight. Rex is a seer, and can see all things that have been touched by midnight or alive in midnight. Dess is extremely good with numbers and patterns, and she is able to come up with tridecalogisms (words that have thirteen letters, I'll explain more later) that scare the darklings off. And Melissa is superpsychic; she can't touch anyone or it's too much of their thoughts to handle, and she has to wear headphones with loud music all the time at school to block out the noise of hundreds of kids' simultaneous thoughts.
There's also one more Midnighter, one that doesn't get along with the others as much: his name is Jonathan, and he can fly! Well actually his power is just a lack of gravity so he is extremely buoyant in the midnight hour. And he can bring others along to fly with him, and Jessica discovers...

"Flying was beautiful. The pale blue streets glinted like rivers beneath them as they crashed through high, wind-borne columns of autumn leaves. There were birds up here too, their wings outstretched in arrested flight and angled to catch the frozen winds. The dark moon glowered over them, almost risen all the way, but it didn't seem to crowd the sky as oppressively as it had last night. From up here Jessica could see the band of stars that stretched around the horizon, bright pinpoints whose white light hadn't been leached blue by the moon."
(pg. 184)

Again, SO COOL. Scott Westerfield does a very good job painting this story with words, making it seem like you're actually there. It was so real for me as I was reading this.
Another cool part of this book was the numerology. Like I said Dess was good with numbers and patterns, but what I didn't mention is that the darklings are scared of some numbers and patterns. Like thirteen? That's the ultimate number no-no for them. And they also hate steel, so if you name a piece of steel with a thirteen-letter word, that piece of steel can become a weapon to kill darklings with. That reminds me:
tridecalogism=thirteen-letter word. Dess made the word up.
There are lots more secrets to be discovered about the Midnighters, and there's probably just as much more in books 2 and 3. I need to find those. ♠♠♠♠♠