Cal doesn’t exactly have a normal job. He works for the Night Watch, a secret organization existing undetected in the bowels of the New York City government. They’re a shadowy group whose role is to hunt down, trap, and secure people known as parasite-positives, or “peeps.” A cross between what less-informed people might call vampires, or zombies, the peeps are a hazard to themselves, and definitely to others, their bite contagious. Cal himself is a carrier, immune to the most debilitating effects of the parasite, but unable to enjoy intimacy in any way, lest he spread it … like he did to his last few girlfriends, by accident. Now, to atone for this, he’s attempting to track down the woman who infected him in the first place. However, hunting for her is about to turn up a whole host of secrets. Bad ones. Underground lairs where peeps don’t play by normal rules any longer, where cats and rats and humans alike coexist in a bizarre symbiosis, where things move deep below civilization’s reaches. Cal and his new friend, Lace, have a lot on the agenda, and they’re about to discover the true purpose of the Night Watch, and the parasite-positives. But what consequences does the truth carry?

Peeps is another exciting new novel by Scott Westerfeld, who’s certainly been hard to miss in the YA field in the past year, with his various ongoing series and stand-alone books. This is as good, and as imaginative, as anything he’s written, and certainly a lot more disturbing than most of it. With the odd-numbered chapters reserved for story, and the even-numbered chapters giving us mini-essays on parasites in the real world, it’s part science lesson, part teen vampire/zombie/conspiracy/urban bio-thriller/romance, and it’s an excellent, albeit skin-crawling, read. It definitely fits in with the Razorbill imprint’s “edgy” attitude.