One hundred and fifty-seven days (43%) into the year, my thirty-third book of fifty (66%) is Midnighters #2: Touching Darkness. Author Scott Westerfeld is celebrating 10 years of freelancing. Numbers, numbers.

Did I actually say what the Midnighters are about? I did not.

In the small town of Bixby, Oklahoma there is an extra hour between midnight and 12:01 AM when the whole town is frozen, except for several young people with extraordinary powers. Oh, and except for the old, evil things that live in the dark. You, know, them.

Westerfeld does a lot of stuff really well, but two things stand out to me in these books: action sequences and strange powers as a metaphor for adolescence (cf Buffy). Between all the Westerfeld I've been reading lately and King Dork, I'm feeling really good about how non-incredibly-traumatic my own nerdy high school years were.