Burning Midnight by Will McIntosh

High School

No one knows where the brilliant-colored spheres came from. One day they were just there, hidden all over the earth like huge gemstones. Burn a pair and they make you a little better: an inch taller, skilled at math, better looking. The rarer the sphere, the more expensive – and the greater the improvement.

17-year-old Sully is a sphere dealer at a flea market. It doesn’t pay much – Alex Holliday’s stores have muscled out most of the independent sellers – but it helps him and his mom make rent.

When Sully meets Hunter, a girl with a natural talent for finding spheres, the two start searching together. One day they find a Gold – a color no one has ever seen. And when Alex Holliday learns what they have, he will go to any lengths, will use all of his wealth and power, to take it from them.

I wasn’t quite sure about this book until I turned the book over and saw a list of possible spheres. After reading the list I was hooked, I’m a sucker for lists.

These Spheres can heighten your natural abilities and seem to have no negative side effects. From what I can tell there are at least 48 or more different Spheres, but I could only find 35 and there were two that I couldn’t figure out what they did. Here’s a list of my personal favorite Spheres:

Teal

Effect: Fall asleep easily

Army Green

Effect: Resistance to the common cold

Burnt Orange

Effect: Speed-reading

Aquamarine

Effect: Quick healing

Mustard

Effect: High Intelligence

Canary Yellow

Effect: Perfect Memory

The thing I found really weird about the spheres is that you need two (a pair) spheres to get the improvement. They call it ‘burning a pair’. I spent the majority of this book wondering why it’s called ‘burning’ and why you need two to do it. I still don’t know.

This story takes place 9 years after the Spheres appeared on Earth. Personally, I would’ve liked hearing the story on how the human race reacted to the Spheres at first and how they discovered their powers.

I knew there had to be some sort of risk with the spheres. You can’t get something for nothing. A lot of people in the book thought that the Spheres were suspicious and would never use them. I would probably own books about Spheres but would never want to ‘burn’ them. Why risk it?

What makes this story so great is how real it is. This is what a world with magic spheres would be like. People using them to make a profit, athletes using them to up their game, people using them for their own personal gain, and people going to great lengths to get their hands on them. Exactly how you’d expect humans to act when handed magic.

This weeks’ Weird but True Fact about Enhanced Abilities 

Some people can hear their eyeballs moving.