I don't usually like books with an old-world kind of setting but this book had just the right amount of mystery and intrigue about the city that gives it a dystopian feel but with a strange edge. ( )

[I wrote this review in 2010]

**Good solid children's / YA fantasy fiction**

Very good original fantasy from this talented young writer. It reminds me of Philip Pullman's Northern Lights series, but is a quite different story. Mark and Lily are brought together by different sad circumstances and soon become firm friends. They live in servitude in the tower of the ancient and powerful astrologer Count Stelli. Lily is tasked with housekeeping duties and Mark with assisting the Count's grandson, Doctor Theo as he works to find cures for some nasty diseases, including a great plague. Very soon though they each have to start making their own choices, none of them easy, as dark and powerful forces show an uncommon level of interest in Mark and Lily and throws their beliefs and friendship into doubt.

David Whitely has created a setting for Mark and Lily's story which is a kind of capitalist utopia society - absolutely anything can be bought and sold within the city (emotions included, and children up to the age of 12) and people who lose the ability to earn their living are afforded no rights at all, not even to basic food and shelter. Charity just doesn't exist even as a concept and money is all that matters. At times I think the message overpowers the story just a fraction, but otherwise it's a very good, tightly written fantasy. Recommended for ages 10/11+. ( )

A fascinating look at the choices two children make in a world ruled by commerce. Great world building and a good read. Read my full review:

http://www.wandsandworlds.com/blog1/2009/08/book-review-midnight-charter.html ( )

I finished this book, but I didn't much like it. I didn't like the characters, especially Mark. I didn't find the world particularly well-built, and I thought the ending was more than a little cheesy. I found the emotion addicts intriguing, and the storefront paved with little bits of colored glass is a lovely image that sticks with me. ( )

Everything about THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER - the plot, the characters, and the setting - is engineered to deliver the author's anti-greed philosophy. It's simplistic, obvious, and exaggerated. As a result, the novel is no fun at all.

Marketing materials compare THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER to Philip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy. The comparison is pure wishful thinking. Pullman created a rich, varied world, and he drew on a very complex theology (with frequent excursions to the deep literary well of John Milton's PARADISE LOST). Whitley's book is thin gruel in comparison. There's no spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down - no whizzing spoon masquerading as an airplane heading for the hanger - just Whitley's dogged determination to tell us over and over again how brutal trade is, how antithetical to generosity and compassion, how inhumane.

I wasn't politically opposed to the message. I'd love to read a book that made the same point with more grace and subtlety. However, THE MIDNIGHT CHARTER has neither.

For anyone looking for something along these lines - a great book with a mildly industrial setting, maybe featuring an orphan - I suggest the MONSTER BLOOD TATTOO series by D.M. Cornish, starting with FOUNDLING. ( )