Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
Format/source: ARC/Netgalley
Published: 7 May 2019
Publisher: Tor.com
Length: 528 pages
Genre: Speculative fiction
★★★★★
I received a free copy from the publisher via NetGalley.
Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story.
Description via Goodreads
Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math.
Roger and Dodger aren’t exactly human, though they don’t realise it. They aren’t exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet.
Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He’s not their father. Not quite. But he has a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own.
Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.
Review
Please know I am not prone to gushing. I hope that statement lends these first two paragraphs some weight 😉 I finished reading Middlegame a week ago. I’ve been desperately blazing through some books and skimming others, chasing the reading high that Middlegame gave me. I think I just need to let it sit and digest before I’m ready to read anything that will inevitably fall short of Middlegame‘s magic. Subjectively, this book had a lot of personal meaning for me. Objectively, it’s an incredible story.
The day I started reading Middlegame, I tweeted “Currently reading @seananmcguire’s Middlegame and it’s gripped my attention so completely that I’ve gotten up three times to start dinner but then drifted back to reading”. (Note that I am generally wary of anything over 380 pages and this book is 500+). Middlegame is the first read of 2019 that completely enveloped me. I have enjoyed a good number of five star reads this year. Middlegame‘s quality exceeds any of those reads. This book captures, for me, the best experiences of reading speculative fiction.
Plot
Okay, enough with the gushing. I’ll try to write more specifically about what I enjoyed, though I don’t expect I can do this book justice. To start, the narrative went in quite a different direction than I expected, but that direction is what I ended up loving most about the book. I expected Roger and Dodger to be lab raised together – that’s not the case at all. They are raised in two separate families as average children, but their special connection allows them to find each other. The story takes place over years as they age and mature.
What initially drew me to Middlegame was the promise of just a few people carrying out grand, private deeds that have mammoth, universal implications. Set in a version of our contemporary world where alchemists secretly work towards their own goals of controlling the universe, one rogue alchemist creates Roger and Dodger to embody the alchemical formula that will enable that control. So the book delivered on that promise. But the plot is secondary to the exploration of these two characters and the relationship between them – a strong friendship I’ve never seen portrayed this well in a novel.
Characters
Roger and Dodger share the close bond of twins, but their relationship develops like a friendship between soulmates, a term I was excited to see McGuire use to describe the two (in an interview linked below) because soulmates has a particular meaning for me and I saw that reflected in Middlegame. (To be super clear, there is no romance between Roger and Dodger.) The individuality of Roger and Dodger, the challenges they face each face and how they react to those challenges, the ways they support each other, and the ways their conflicts play out elevate Middlegame to a gripping and moving read. McGuire’s writing style, which I feel in love with through the Wayward Children books, is at its best here as McGuire shares and explores characters’ feelings and actions.
The Bottom Line
I haven’t read all of McGuire’s novels, but Middlegame must be her strongest book so far, a work of speculative fiction that defies stereotypes of the genre. If you don’t read speculative or science fiction, you should still read this.
Further Information
- Read an excerpt
- Author website
- Interview @ Goodreads
- Review by Lili @ Utopia State of Mind
- Kirkus review
- Publishers Weekly review
This sounds interesting, thank you for the info. There’s a few authors whose books I gush over, but I haven’t read a book that captures me like you described lately.
(I’ve been looking at some of my older reviews and I’m realizing I missed replying to a bunch of comments, so I apologize for this delayed response.) You’re welcome! It was a pretty special experience to read this book. I actually ended up rereading it a couple months later. (Interestingly, both times I’ve read a book twice in one year, they were books by Seanan McGuire).
Sounds like you really loved this one, I think I need to check it out.
(I’ve been looking at some of my older reviews and I’m realizing I missed replying to a bunch of comments, so I apologize for this delayed response.) Yes, I hope you do! I haven’t seen many bloggers I know talking about this and I would like that to change, lol.
Hurry up and start “Wayward Children”!!!
Don’t worry, I’ve read all of those too 😊 I love them nearly almost as much as Middlegame!
LOL! I hear you!!!