The Midnight Train

How it reads

The Midnight Train is fantasy (portal fantasy, specifically), and its dominant mood is hopeful. Whatever it puts its people through, it believes things can get better. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in several locations, in no single period, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are identity, loss and grief and redemption. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 296 pages it's a quick read. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.