Midnight's Choice (novel)

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Midnight’s Choice

Red Fox edition 1999
Author Kate Thompson
Cover artist Darren Lock
Country Ireland
Language English
Series Switchers Trilogy
Genre(s) Fantasy
Publisher The Bodley Head
Publication date 1998
Pages 166
Preceded by Switchers
Followed by Wild Blood


Midnight’s Choice is a fantasy novel for young adults, by Kate Thompson. It is the second book in the Switchers Trilogy, and continues the story of Tess and Kevin, two young Irish shapeshifters (or Switchers, as they are called in the novel). It also introduces the character of Martin, another Switcher, who is the book’s main antagonist.

Contents

[edit] Setting

Midnight’s Choice is set in the city of Dublin, in Ireland. The events of the book take place “a few days after New Year”, although exactly which year is uncertain.

[edit] Plot introduction

Tess faces a terrible choice between the eternal purity of a phoenix's existence, and the darkness that is the unlife of a vampire.

[edit] Plot summary

The book opens a few seconds after the end of Switchers. Tess Switches herself into the form of a phoenix and flies out of her room to join Kevin, who is now permanently in the shape of such a magical bird. While she is gone, her pet rat Algernon receives a telepathic message which is being sent to all the rats of the city by an unknown source. The rat tries desperately to escape his cage and answer the call (scattering his bedding in the process), but the cage proves too strong.

Tess tries to ask Kevin what has happened to him since they last spoke, but when she looks into his eyes, her mind is overwhelmed by the purity and beauty of the phoenix’s nature, and she instantly loses interest in asking questions. When she returns to her room, Tess sleeps for a few hours, and upon waking, is shocked to find Algernon’s cage in a mess. On the school bus, she recalls the glorious memories of her time as a phoenix, but realises that she sensed a certain detachment in Kevin’s demeanour. That night, she becomes worried about Algernon’s restless behaviour, and her animal-mind at last detects the message to which the rat is attempting to respond. As Tess ponders recent events, Algernon breaks out of his cage, and escapes into the city’s sewers. In the form of a rat, Tess follows him to an empty house filled with thousands of rats. There, she discovers that the source of the mysterious call is a male Switcher.

The next day, while the school bus is passing through Phibsboro, Tess recognises the house to which the rats were drawn, and gets off the bus to investigate. She sees a red-haired boy standing in the doorway of the opposite house, and somehow senses that he is the Switcher who was calling the rats. She resolves to speak to him when she gets the chance.

Tess reads a newspaper article which claims that a rare, golden bird has been captured in the Phoenix Park, and is now on display in Dublin Zoo. She realises that this bird is Kevin, and sets off to find the Switcher to ask for help in breaking her friend out of confinement. When Tess reaches the boy’s house, she tells his mother that she is one of his schoolmates, and that she needs his help with a project. The woman believes her, and allows her into the house. Tess finds the boy (whose name is Martin) sleeping in the darkness of his room, and tells him that she knows he is a Switcher. Martin agrees to help her, but only on the condition that she return to his house that night so that he can demonstrate his skill as a Switcher to her.

When she does return, he takes her for a walk through the streets, and then demonstrates the truly awesome and horrible skill which he has learned by Switching into a vampire. Realising that Martin had merely intended to lure her out so that he could feed on her, Tess is terrified. Martin uses his vampire powers to hypnotise her, and then bites her neck and drains some of her blood. The shock of this stimulates Tess’ survival instincts, and she Switches into the only form in which she will be safe from Martin: a vampire. Once she is in this form, all of Tess’ revulsion toward the concept of vampirism vanishes. She bemoans her hunger for blood, but Martin warns her not to kill her victim when she feeds, as doing so would arouse suspicion. They stalk the city for a while, seeking good prey, and eventually come upon a young couple in a car, on whom they feed.

For the next few days, Tess behaves scornfully toward her parents, upsetting them greatly. At last, when Tess’ mother mentions the phoenix, the memory of her time as one of those glorious, pure birds dispels the lingering aspects of the vampire personality, and she apologises for her behaviour. She and her parents visit the zoo to in order to see the “rare bird”. At the zoo, she meets Lizzie, whose neighbour has brought her to see the phoenix. Lizzie claims that she is worried about something, but Tess is unsure what she means. Lizzie explains that the phoenix is a powerful force of good, and will change the lives of many people for the better, but according to the nature of the world, some dark force must have come into existence to balance out the presence of the phoenix. When Tess enters the building in which the bird is caged, she is suddenly overcome by a feeling of joy and warmth, and realises that the bird is having the same effect on everyone in the room. Outside, she and her parents enjoy a game of Frisbee, all their arguments forgotten. Their happiness is not deflated even when Tess accidentally loses the Frisbee in the bushes. However, Lizzie tells Tess that the she has “work to do”, and she is wasting time.

Tess visits Martin again, and he explains to her the gruesome circumstances of his father’s death. She is horrified, but he seems not to care. He takes her into the crypt which he plans to make his home, and she realises that he has been using the rats to excavate this crypt. She tells him that she never wants to return to being a vampire, but Martin claims that now he has bitten her, she will become one of the undead as soon as she dies. He tells her that his fifteenth birthday is the following day, and that he has chosen to remain a vampire. He offers her the chance to avoid indignity by joining him willingly, but she refuses, claiming that if she chooses to become an immortal phoenix, she will never succumb to death or vampirism. So as to destroy Tess’s confidence, Martin sends the city’s rats to kill Kevin at the zoo, but the phoenix escapes with Tess’s help. He and Martin confront each other in the park, and Tess steps between them. She is confronted with the choice between becoming like Martin or Kevin. Martin uses his hypnotic powers to coerce her, and she seems about to choose when Kevin uses his purifying power to draw her toward him, making her want to choose his path. The two influences become rival forces within Tess, and each attempts to convince her to join its cause. Tess alternates between allegiances and the struggle within her becomes so strong that it begins to damage her mind. As she tries desperately to choose her path, Tess remembers something that Lizzie said to her earlier: “It’s not always what we are that needs changing, but the way we thinks”, and suddenly realises what she is doing wrong: All along she has been convinced that she must choose to be either a vampire or a phoenix, when in fact, the option of simply remaining human was never closed to her. Tess chooses to retain her humanity, and this choice somehow transforms both Martin and Kevin back into their human forms. Martin, his defences down, breaks down over the loss of his father, causing Tess to be overwhelmed with compassion. She tries to comfort him, but he runs off into the trees when he realises that he appears vulnerable. Tess follows, but slips on the Frisbee which she lost earlier.

Tess enters Martin’s home in the form of a cat, and finds that he has fed on his mother, leaving her exhausted, and then left the house. Tess takes Kevin back to her house, where they discuss the events of the past few days. Kevin claims that because he and Martin balanced each other out, Martin’s return to humanity meant that Kevin too lost his supernatural form. Their discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Algernon, who informs them that Martin has disappeared, and that his control over the rats of the city is broken. Tess and Kevin realise that Martin has chosen to remain human, and decide to help him through his newly exposed grief.

[edit] Major Characters

  • Tess: The principal protagonist of the series. Tess is a Switcher, and is fourteen at the time of this book.
  • Kevin: Formerly a Switcher, Kevin has passed his fifteenth birthday by the time of this book, and therefore no longer possesses the ability to change his shape. At the end of Switchers, Kevin chose to take on the form of a phoenix for the rest of his life. He spends most of Midnight’s Choice in this form, but reverts to being human at the end of the story.
  • Martin: The book’s principal antagonist. Martin is a handsome, red-haired boy, and is only a few days away from his fifteenth birthday at the time of Midnight’s Choice. After the death of his father, Martin began to transform himself into a vampire so as to avoid dealing with the pain of this loss.
  • Elizabeth "Lizzie" Larten: An elderly former Switcher. In this book, she warns Tess that something evil (i.e. Martin’s vampire self) has entered the city.

[edit] Major themes

The principal theme of Midnight’s Choice (as with all the books of the Switchers Trilogy) is the idea of ‘coming of age’, and the possibilities which teenagers face in the world as they grow up. In particular, this book explores the eternal struggle of good and evil, as well as the choice between the two which is faced by humans. The two supernatural creatures which appear as rivals in Midnight’s Choice are drawn from two widely known, folkloric myths: That of the phoenix and that of the vampire. In the novel, these two characters are incarnations of good and evil respectively, and each advocates an alluring lifestyle: the vampire offers an eternal life of dark power and security from grief within the cold persona of the hunter, but which bars its subject from love or closeness. The phoenix, by contrast, offers a different kind of immortality, one of perfect, benevolent serenity and kindness, but one which also creates a certain level of detachment.

[edit] Trivia

  • Near the end of the book, Tess' father is adressed as "Seamus", the first and only time in the series at which either of Tess' parents is referenced by name.

[edit] Publication history

This book was first published in Great Britain in 1998, by The Bodley Head.

[edit] External Links

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