I have been a fan of Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire) for a while but had not read one that was written under the name Seanan McGuire. While I love her dark parasites and killer mermaids, this was the perfect amount of familiar and new. "Middlegame" has elements of fairy tales and hints of popular culture and drew me in from the start. I was satisfied when I finished. It felt complete.

Seanan McGuire is quickly becoming one of those authors that I'll read no matter what they write - and lucky me, I have a lot to work to catch up on. Middlegame is long, but it's well worth your time. You won't want to put it down and it has just about everything you could ask for at that. McGuire is fantastic at developing her characters - Roger and Dodger are brilliant to follow and to get to know their relationship. Just a fair warning, there are time jumps and perspective shifts so you'll definitely want to pay attention. I don't want to go into a lot of detail on this because I think this is one you'll want to go into with as little info as possible so as it won't spoil the fun of discovery. If you enjoy complex fantasy with fantastic world-building and complex characters, I have a feeling you'll enjoy this unique novel.

“The Midwich cuckoos have nothing on us.”

** Trigger warning for suicide. **

“Reaching into her pocket, she produces a handful of coal dust streaked with glints of silver. The coal came from a mine where a disaster claimed the life of over a hundred men; the silver, melted down from the jewelry of a woman whose husband had choked the life from her body before bedding his mistress in her marital bed. It’s a subtle, complex thing, is alchemy.”

“History is an equation. It can be changed under the right circumstances. It should be terrifying, but it’s really just wonderful, because it means so many of their mistakes have been curated ones, deemed necessary by themselves in the future.”

“Everything is perfect. Everything is doomed.”

Roger Middleton and Dodger Cheswich are two extraordinary human beings…first and foremost, because they aren’t really human beings after all. Not entirely. The identical-on-the-inside, fraternal-on-the-outside twins were created in an underground lab, by a human who also isn’t quite human.

An alchemical construct like them, James Reed was the crowning achievement of his maker, Asphodel Baker, arguably the greatest alchemist of her time, and a wildly successful children’s author to boot. That is, until Reed murdered Baker in his pursuit of the Impossible City, “the alchemical apex which waited at the peak of all human knowledge and potential.” To Reed, Roger and Dodger are just one more brick in the improbable road.

The latest in a long line of experiments (all with cutesy rhyming names: Erin and Darren, Seth and Beth, etc.), Roger and Dodger were made to embody the Doctrine of Ethos. Roger was given the power of language; Dodger, mathematics. Separately, the two are geniuses; together, they have the power to rewrite the fabric of the universe. Which is why, as babies, Roger and Dodger are separated: placed in different adoptive homes on opposite sides of the country. Yet, try as Reed might to keep them apart, the two always find their way back to one another, linked as they are by a psychic connection.

Can Roger and Dodger forgive each other for repeated trespasses, manifest their powers, and defeat Reed’s forces before he discovers the secret of their subjugation – or abandons them in favor of a pair that’s easier to control?

This is their story. This is the story of the world.

MIDDLEGAME is … well, it’s wild. I love Seanan McGuire, and have come to expect the unexpected from her, but MIDDLEGAME is unlike anything I’ve ever read before – for better and worse. I lean towards science fiction over fantasy, and so this might be the first book I’ve read wherein alchemy is a driving force of the story. (I dug it! The Hand of Glory, whoah. There are truly gruesome bits in here.)

But the stuff about the Doctrine of Ethos proved a little more difficult to wrap my head around. One word that seems to pop up in nearly every review of MIDDLEGAME is “ambitious,” and for good reason. Often, and especially in the first quarter or third of the book, I found myself getting stuck up in the philosophical underpinnings of the story and, yuck, who wants that. (I took Philosophy 101 my first semester in college and suffice it to say, it was not as fun as I’d hoped.) Once I learned to just let go and let the action carry me along, I had a much more enjoyable time of it. I guess you can take as little or as much from the narrative as you want.

The chapters jump back and forth in time, which can be a little confusing if you’re not paying attention, but I loved it. Time travel is my jam, and it comes in many forms in MIDDLEGAME. Roger and Dodger have a really interesting, complex relationship that evolves and changes over decades, and I am so here for that. (Though I thank the gods that McGuire didn’t have them hook up, like another closely bonded sibling pair of hers who shall remain nameless.) And yay for guinea pigs gone rogue! Roger and Dodger are not the only embodiments who yearn for freedom, and the shifting loyalties and conflicting goals keep everyone on their toes.

MIDDLEGAME is a must for Seanan McGuire fans, and for those who like their sci-fi and fantasy with particularly wibbly wobbly time-y wimey stuff. The only rule here is that THERE ARE NO RULES!

I didn’t love the writing in the beginning, though it gets better. I did love how the time manipulation worked and the focus on sibling relationships, but by the end I was a bit frustrated with it all. Overall it was really cool and often sad and sometimes exciting, and just very different from anything else I’ve read recently, but I couldn’t give it five stars. I considered giving it more of a three and a half rating.

In terms of writing, the overly-metaphored style of the beginning didn’t work for me, even though that stuff is usually my jam. I guess it felt kinda stiff, maybe it didn’t work with how confused you are with being thrown into this new system. But the worst offender was how fluid the narration was in terms of focus. Was it the e-book arc formatting? Were there supposed to be breaks between the shifts? Or is this just how it was meant to be and I didn’t like it? Because I disapprove.

Rodger and Dodger’s relationship is incredibly good, and the way they’re always hurting and healing each other is done really well. There’s all kinda of awkwardness, and of needing each other, and being totally different and being the only ones who understand each other. And every time they’re forced apart it does really hurt, and it’s good for the book’s stakes. But another thing about the book’s stakes:

The thing about certain kinds of time manipulation is that it can make you skeptical of bad things that happen, because why can’t the characters get around those events? Wouldn’t you? The book engages with this a lot, and when it does, it’s really good. On the other hand, when I got to the end and everyone was like “Well! We haven’t figured out a way to manipulate around this one thing yet!” I felt kinda skeptical. Like, with all your super special powers, it felt like there was a fix! Maybe you’re just too powerful for me to accept that!

Your feelings may vary, because the liquid nature of time in this world leaves lots of wiggle room, and that’s kinda cool.

Author Seanan McGuire's Middlegame is a twisted story that follows several key characters including James Reed, Leigh Barrow, Dodger Cheswich, and Rodger Middleton. The story begins in 1886 where a children's author uses fiction to encode her principals on alchemy with an end goal of ultimate, godly power. Her creation, James Reed, has tried to breed children in pairs using the concepts of Chaos and Disorder - Language and Math - into each subject.

By splitting the Doctrine of Ethos into a pair of human bodies, one of whom is endowed with an extraordinary deftness for math, and the other an extraordinary dexterity for language, Reed has exceeded his creator Asphodel. His children are attuned to natural elements like Water, Fire, Earth, and Air. Dodger and Rodger have no idea how special they are until they are able to speak to each other cross country. Dodger and Rodger believe that they are able to communicate long distances because of quantum entanglement.

There is a part of me that was saddened that the book was way too long for what could have been decided in 300 pages or so. It was also puzzling that every time the twins got closer, one of them would do something dumb, and walk away thus pushing the timeline ahead several years into the future. There is a particular story line that I had to go back and re-read several times in order to understand. That is the Impossible City which Reed designs his entire plans on being able to be the first one to reach its destination.

Rodger and Dodger struggle with many different issues in this book. The twins are simultaneously drawn together and repelled from each other. They have issues that tear them apart, but they always seem to find a way back together again even if it takes up to 7 years at one point. The curious part of the story was using dozens of bodies in order to create one single one as to what happens to one of the main characters in this book. It is fair to say that none of the characters in this book were born, they were instead made by those like Reed, and Leigh Barrow who is just plain evil incarnate. Rodger and Dodger become a sort of rallying point since they are the only twins who have survived being separated by long distances.

Finally, it is fair to say that because of who the author is of this book, I had more patience than I would if I didn't know who the author was, or what she was capable of in terms of resolving opened storylines.

Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn't attained.

I have been on a journey with this book! It became my number one book I need in 2019. I mean, between the author, the quote above (which isn't from the book but is SO GOOD), and the HAND OF GLORY COVER, I needed this book. I searched NYCC for ARCs, but if there were any, I had to work during the time. I actually ended up winning a physical ARC from 24in48! only to have it stolen because UPS sucks. Thankfully Tor is amazing and sent me an e-ARC after this happened. I have devoured it slowly, reading it between other books as I try to keep my vow of being on time with ARC reviews. So thank you Tor, Netgalley, and 24in48 for a copy of this book. It in no way influenced all the raving I am about to do.

Middlegame
by Seanan McGuire
Published Date: May 2019
Read Date: May 2019
Format: ebook ARC
Genre: Fantasy, urban fantasy (maybe?)
Page Count: 528 Pages
Rating: 5/5 Moose
Synopsis
James Reed, the "descendant" of Asphodel Baker is as skilled at alchemy as his creator was. But he craves more power and to control the universe. He wants to control the Doctrine of Ethos. In doing so, he creates Roger, who is good with words and can understand the world through story, and Dodger, who can break the world down to its mathematical components. They're twins, not quite human, but not quite Gods either. Separated for most of their life, the two set out on a journey they aren't quite prepared to survive.
Characters
Roger Middleton - Raised in Boston, Roger is the embodiment of the side of the Doctrine focused on words and language.

Dodger Cheswich - Raised in South California, Dodger is the embodiment of the side of the Doctrine focused on mathematics.

James Reed - a hundred plus year old alchemist set out to control the Doctrine of Ethos. Also a creation himself.

Erin - Dodger's college roommate
Rants, Raves, and Thoughts


Where to start with this book? While I think that McGuire's work is usually accessible to everyone, I can see this one as requiring me to say "I love this book BUT..." when I recommend it. This came to my attention when one of my favorite reviewers rated this book fairly lowly (2 stars). I was heartbroken, as we tend to line up on how we feel about most books. Thankfully, this is one we disagree on.

This book is told in a disjointed timeline. It opens up to "Timeline: five minutes too late, thirty seconds from the end of the world" and then skips back to 1886, then 1986 -- all in mere pages. It takes a little while to get used to this and to understand why it's happening.

Secondly, this book is a slow moving train. We start with Roger and Dodger as children, meeting at the age of 7. Well, "meeting," I guess, as they are chatting telepathically across the country. This is after the opening "prologue" called FAILURE where we seeing Dodger dying. It's uncomfortable, it is jarring, and personally, I loved it.

Throughout the entire novel, typically towards the end of a "book," there are quotes from a children's series that I will admit I had to google to see if it was real. (As someone who got into Animorphs hard and young, I know there are so many children's books I missed out on that I need to go back and read.) We get quotes about the Improbable Road and the Impossible City with Zeb and Avery, all taken from From Over the Woodward Wall by Deborah Baker. These quotes are obviously supposed to parallel Roger and Dodger's ventures, and strikingly resemble Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland in their whimsy and tone. (Which may be why I had to google it -- it was too familiar to be faked to my silly brain.)
Here in the Up-and-Under, we're both things at once, always, and we're never anything in-between...

What I love about this book is how it breaks down time and how someone can view the world. I have an almost equal love of maths and language -- both just more than a shallow interest, but neither too deep I suppose. Still, the combination of the two is what made me excited about this book, and I think McGuire uses both to build a world that is real feeling. Time travel is possible -- of course it is, you just have to find the right equation! I do think the maths is emphasized more than the language side, but not to a detriment. Dodger is the more fascinating character anyways. She's tormented by her genius, unable to blend into society like Roger is. It leaves a fear that she isn't as important, that she's being left behind somehow. And this fear is crucial to her personality, to her character, and is the basis on if Roger and Dodger will succeed or not.
He's just a dream that almost killed her, and she can't fall asleep again. Not when she's come so far.

And really, it is the relationship between Roger and Dodger that I love. They're supposed to be two parts of a whole, and it reflects in how similar yet different they are. Roger is able to fit in, have friends, date, give off the appearance of a life outside of his genius, while Dodger is all consumed by numbers and solving maths. She's more reserved, more walls, more alone. Does this mean she relies on Roger more than he on her? If you ask Roger, not at all. But I am not sure, honestly.

I don't know too much about the Doctrine of Ethos (prior to reading this book, I just knew it somehow related to music theory - thanks high school band maybe?) and doing some research, there isn't a direct Wiki page really to even start researching from. Based on the novel I assumed there were three sets of opposites for it: Maths vs Words, Chaos vs Order and......what's the third? This is why I started searching for clarification. (My confusion lies in that there were three sets of twins created at one time - Roger and Dodger being one set.) However, it basically is the idea that the force behind music can control what type of person you can turn into. While this has been discussed as good vs evil, it does appear originally that it may have referred to logical vs emotional -- which supports how McGuire uses the concept in her book. Maths (logical) -- it cannot lie, it cannot trick. Words (emotional) -- they frequently stand for what they don't actually mean.
No, silly, this is math. Math is never a trick. Math never plays tricks. Sometimes it makes problems, but they always have solutions. Not like stupid English.

Final Moments
This book, like so many that I love, isn't for everyone. You have to be willing to step outside the real world and stand in the Up-and-Under to appreciate it, and be ready for everything you're experiencing to go away in a white light. At the very least, you get a mathematician who has an absolute love of Ian Malcolm that everyone should have. I almost regret not studying Chaos Theory now.



Even if this book isn't for you, give McGuire a try. She's currently writing a few Marvel comics, she writes fantasy and horror (frequently under Mira Grant), and I think she's diverse enough that everyone will find something of hers to love.
****
So much to say about this bafflingly amazing book — RTF this week

Roger and Dodger are twins separated at birth but at the age of seven Dodger helps Roger with his math homework and their friendship begins. With starts and stops in their metal connection due to the project that brought them about and placed them far away from one another they don’t become close and try to figure out what makes them special until college. What makes them special is they were created using alchemy in order to control the world. The project has been watching them all their lives and knows when they have been contacting one another and when they start making changes to their world using their newfound powers. But they are not tools to be used and now they are on the run to protect themselves from what is trying to claim their power.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley

Middlegame is perhaps the most ambitious novels from Seanan McGuire and is a showcase for her skill at telling a good and complex story. Twins, math, alchemy, murder, time-bending, family, secret organizations, impossible powers, and just about everything McGuire can throw into this wonderous novel. Seanan McGuire has blended together as much as she possibly could stuff into one novel and she makes the whole thing work.

Middlegame is a novel about separated twins struggling to come together and the people that are keeping them apart in order to better build them into something that can open a road to an Impossible City that will grant unbelievable power. The novel is grounded in what seems like an almost normal reality of Roger and Dodger, the two incredible intelligent and gifted twins mentioned previously. It is that grounding that allows the rest of the novel's structure to work, the hints that there is more to the story than we're even seeing through the different viewpoint characters. Seanan McGuire goes big with Middlegame and she hits the mark.

Reed is definitely the villain you love to hate – he is completely amoral and fully focused on attaining the highest power that all alchemists are seeking. He has created several sets of twins, who are designed to perfectly complement each other’s strengths. Some are brought up together in the laboratory where they were created, while others are split and brought up separately until they grow into their powers. Roger and Dodger fall into the second tranche.

However, they manage to find each other, even though they are both very young and living hundreds of miles apart. Once their connection is discovered, they are split up again – causing anger and trauma to both… Initially, the viewpoint jumps around a bit as McGuire establishes the stakes and demonstrates just what the hapless twins are up against. But once the action centres on Roger and Dodger and we follow their highs and lows as they grow up, I was pulled into the story and became engrossed in the unfolding action.

I liked both of them – Dodger is the more sensitive and brittle personality, who grows up holding people at arm’s length, while Roger is more comfortable in his own skin. I enjoyed watching their development – and the various twists as first they are separated and then get together.
Meanwhile Reed is always lurking in the background, monitoring their progress and comparing it with his other experiments… And yes, the Hand of Glory features throughout the book. Because we get to know the characters well, I really cared and found this one difficult to put down once it hit its stride. I’m not sure that opening section is necessary as I found it distracting while waiting for that particular shoe to drop, which I think interfered with my enjoyment somewhat.

However, the climax was suitably convincing and brought this epic story to a strong conclusion – although there is potential for another book in this world. While I obtained an arc of Middlegame from the author via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
8/10

3.5 This is such a weird story! It's almost like one of Ms. McGuire's Wayward Children Series, but full length and very dark. It's a very character-driven novel with Roger and Dodger growing up and realizing that they are somehow connected. With stops and starts, they figure things out and are promptly thrust into a race for their lives. It's interesting, but it's probably not for everyone. I just didn't get some of it, so it was a little confusing for me.

Middlegame is a fantastical Frankenstein blending of the classic children’s fantasy (alchemy and magic) adventure story (Phillip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis, Joan Aitken) but NOT for children; with a large bolt of science, maths and science fiction (time travel and reanimation).

There is some pretty dark murder and violence, which is not graphically depicted, but could definitely spark shivers in more sensitive readers. I consider myself fairly unflappable but confess that Leigh Burrows gave me actual nightmares.

Roger and Dodger (and Erin and Darren) should be pretty unlikable characters in theory, as they are so focused on their particular narrow set of skills and interests that their humanity can slide into the background at times. Yet they were eminently likeable and I found myself very quickly caring deeply about what happened to them and how they would all make it successfully along their improbable road. Which made for a tense read, as the first pages make it clear how very improbable that would be!

So, a sci-fi fairytale for grownups. There is a love of wordplay and storytelling that propels the narrative beneath the STEM surface, but the real driving force is the characters and their relationships as they develop and change. Roger and Dodger, their relationship with the world and each other, are the heart and soul of the book. Which is exactly as it should be in a story that explores what makes us human or monsters, or both.





There is so much blood.
Roger didn’t know there was this much blood in the human body. It seems impossible, ridiculous, a profligate waste of something that should be precious and rare – and most importantly, contained. This blood belongs inside the body where it began, and yet here it is, and here he is, and everything is going so wrong.

– Seanan McGuire, Middlegame

Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

Received an advance copy for an honest review.

This one will be divisive, even among Seanan McGuire fans, I think.

It shares this with her other works: She creates characters you like, even the unlikeable ones, and they all have motivations and plans that don't quite mesh. She takes outlandish ideas and makes them sound almost plausible, even obvious. She takes magical situations and throws the real world at them. And her writing, her choice of words, is beautiful and scary and funny and weird.

But "Middlegame" is more complicated than most of her works and she doesn't explain things to you or her characters for quite a while. Some things may still seem confusing even at the end, and it's on you how you'll feel about that.

The short version is this: An alchemist, defying the orders of a secret group of alchemists, attempts to create superbeings whose power he can take for his own. Previously this was too much for one child so the power is split among two fraternal twins -- one gifted with the power of language, the other math -- to be separated at birth and raised apart until they mature. It's been tried several times, with some spectacular failures. But Rodger and Dodger, two lonely, brilliant children, discover each other by accident and learn to communicate telepathically.

Problem is, the alchemists don't want that to happen yet. And they're willing to kill the children, or anyone who finds out about them, to protect their secret.

There's lots of fire, explosions, murder, intrigue, children's books, mad science, mysterious college roommates, and chess. But there's also philosophical discussion, emotional betrayal, magic, and more. And wiseassery. Always wiseassery.

The book will not feed you information along the way, as you need it. It may come across as frustrating or confusing if you don't like not understanding what's going on as you're reading it. But as a deep dive into a world rich with magic that underlies "reality" and the real consequences of what happens when you try to affect it, it's excellent.

Middlegame

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

4.5 stars bumped because, while all of it didn't work for me, the parts that did work were truly wonderful.

Alchemy- a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.

Imagine you're an only child, with an imaginary friend. You find out your imaginary friend, whose voice you hear in your head, is a real person. You find out they live on the other side of the country. You also find out you both have the same birthday and year, and when you finally meet, the same eyes and features. Imagine you're a twin. And when you finally come together, you make something entirely new and different. And dangerous.

Roger Middleton and Dodger Cheswich are twins. They aren't twin humans, though; they're twin alchemical constructs. They are called cuckoos (a la Wyndham's brood parasite Midwich Cuckoos) because human parents have adopted and raised them, though at least one set of those parents doesn't know that the cuckoos aren't human. But that's okay because Roger and Dodger don't know what they are and what they can do yet, either.

An unusual aspect of this book is that we don't even meet Roger and Dodger (the central characters!) until more than fifty pages into the story, and we don't see what they can do until more than halfway through the book. Although, maybe that last part is a good thing. What they can do may not be beneficial for the world. Roger and Dodger are written with exquisite care, and for me, the best part of this book is their maturation as individuals, their sibling relationship and their character arcs. Roger and Dodger aren't "regular people" in the biologically-born sense but they are real and feeling people who are counted, like their brethren, as disposable by their creator. (There's a whole powerful subtext here that runs throughout the book in which alchemy could be equated to religion and religions may be too quick to discard those who are "imperfect.") Erin, a character who surprised me in that I grew to like her in spite of her viciously thorough side, gives us a poignant sense of what it's like when one alchemical twin is lost. In addition to giving us a story of two people finding "their other half" and figuring out who they are, the novel gives us the story of what happens when you meet your maker and your maker is a terrible person.

Looking at what didn't work as well for me, the alchemy itself was rather sketchy (seemingly not based on gnostic alchemical-doctrine?), as was the application of quantum entanglement on a macroscopic scale. The non-specific fourth-dimensional math, and the timeslip elements of the story, were never really explained in a grounded way for the reader. Still, the story kept me engaged. I found it read like a perfect amalgam of Seanan McGuire (fantasy) and Mira Grant (horror, since there's a reason there's a hand of glory on the cover, folks) writing styles.

Middlegame, middlegame... This is a book where I have contemplated the definitions of central themes (alchemy, cuckoos, manifestation, entanglement) including that title, which means the phase of a chess game, after the opening, when all or most of the pieces and pawns remain on the board. It leaves me wondering if there is space for a prequel. And a sequel. I'd be happy to see more of these characters.

Favorite quote:

"Stick and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me? Words almost never end that way. Words can be whispered bullets, quick when no one is looking, and words don't leave blood or bruises behind. Words disappear without a trace. That's what makes them so powerful. That's what makes them so important."

I really enjoyed McGuire's Wayward Children series and so I was eager to read her next book. However I didn't connect with the characters in the same way. I think this book just wasn't for me, although I'm sure many of her fans and new readers will enjoy the suspenseful plot.

How can I describe Middlegame? At its heart, it’s a story featuring a pair of twins who learn how to become family to each other. But expand that—it’s a story about two kids trying to stop an alchemist from taking over the world. No, expand it further—it’s Order and Chaos. Words and Equations. Isolation and Community. Balance and Instability. Finally, throw in some time manipulation and wrap it up in a children’s fable that could also be the blueprint to the end of the world.

Full review at the link below.

This book was amazing. Seanan never seems to disappoint!! Her writing is so lyrical and well thought out. The characters were great and the story and world was so unique. This may be one of my new all time favorite books.

This was my first book by Seanan McGuire. I have read and loved the series under her pen name, Mira Grant, so I thought I'd give this a whirl. However, I was not impressed. This book was long (528 pages!) and it seemed to drag. This world of alchemy and what seems like magic to me seemed interesting but instead, I was bored. I was confused for a lot of this book, not quite understanding what was going on. Even when the pacing of the book picks up (pretty much the last 30%), I still wasn't quite sure what was going on. Our main characters were intriguing and I did push myself to finish this book because I wanted to see how it ended.

4.5 stars. James Reed and his assistant Leigh Barrow ― a pair of rebel alchemists of the mad scientist type ― have been doing human experimentation for years, trying to make/breed (it’s a combination of both) children who will embody the “Doctrine of Ethos” and have godlike magical powers. Because putting all this power in one person hasn’t worked, they split the Doctrine into its two components, math and language, between two fraternal twins. One twin will be a math genius; the other gifted with language and words. Raising these children under controlled conditions, the alchemists believe they can achieve the results they want and keep the powers under their own control.

Roger and Dodger are one of these sets of twins, separated at birth and adopted out to families living on opposite coasts of the United State of America. Roger is the language-gifted child and Dodger (a girl) is the math-gifted one. At age 7 the twins figure out that they have not only the ability to mentally communicate (through “quantum entanglement,” announces Roger triumphantly) but the capacity to see through each other’s eyes ― a revelation to Roger, who is completely colorblind. But meanwhile the single-minded alchemists are keeping a VERY close eye on them. They'll do anything - even murder - to make sure nothing interferes with their plans.

In Middlegame, McGuire blends together light science fiction, fantasy and some horror, and then tosses in elements of Greek philosophy (the aforementioned Doctrine of Ethos), Tarot-like concepts, timeline shifting, classic children’s literature, and more in an almost indescribable literary concoction. Initially I found it a little too muddled. I wanted the improbable road leading to the Impossible City to make more logical sense, and I thought the half-explained quasi-Tarot references to the King of Cups, Queen of Wands/Swords, Jack Daw, and Page of Frozen Waters were more distracting than useful. A. Deborah Baker only briefly appears at the very beginning of Middlegame, but her ideas inform the entire plot. The chapter-heading quotes from her Over the Woodward Wall add color to the main plot but didn’t supply all of the additional clarity and meaning I was looking for. (I deeply wish that this were an actual book, though!)

But a funny thing happened on my way to the virtual forum where Jana and I were exchanging our ideas and assembling our joint review. I dug back into the text of Middlegame and found that these various elements melded together far more satisfactorily than I thought on first read. Elements that at first seemed opaque appeared much clearer on second read. I especially like the idea of L. Frank Baum using The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to deliberately muddy Baker’s pure division of the four elements (water, air, fire and earth and the related humors) into four quadrants.

I’m still dubious about the “Doctrine of Ethos” as the concept underlying the entire alchemical plot. The original doctrine (a Greek theory of how music influences the thoughts and emotions of humans) has an extremely tenuous logical connection to how our unbalanced alchemists are literally embodying the Doctrine in a pair of individuals, “forc[ing] the Doctrine into flesh” as a way to influence the entire world, the fabric of time and reality itself. And I’ve concluded … you just have to roll with it. Suspend disbelief, strap yourself into your seat and enjoy the ride.

"Smart kids get put on a pedestal by parents and teachers alike, and the rest of the class gathers around the base of it throwing rocks, trying to knock them down. People who say ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ don’t understand how words can be stones, hard and sharp-edged and dangerous and capable of doing so much more harm than anything physical."

McGuire has such a gift for putting profound insights into words that strike your heart. As Roger and Dodger, both lonely children who don’t really fit in with others, get to know each other through their long-distance telepathic relationship, they realize how much they fit together, the scholastic strengths of one matching the weaknesses of the other.

"They can help each other. They can shore up the broken places. He knows the words for this: cooperation, symbiosis, reciprocity. So many words, and he’ll teach her all of them, if she’ll just keep being his friend."

I realized, not long before Roger and Dodger themselves mention it, that their last names, Middleton and Cheswich, combine to make Midwich, a clever reference to The Midwich Cuckoos, a classic SF horror novel about a group of alien children (partially) concealed among humans. In Middlegame, though, the cuckoos have our undivided sympathy.

Erin, one of a set of Reed’s failed twin sets turned assistant, developed into an excellent, multi-layered character, with far more depth than I initially expected. She ended up being one of my favorite characters … unlike Leigh, whose beauty hides an appalling bloodthirstiness.

I have to add that I think the main plot of Middlegame is ingenious. I loved experiencing the growth of Roger and Dodger and the twists and turns in their relationship, and seeing how their powers gradually manifested. The astrolabe in Reed’s lab turns out to be more than a lovely symbol. There’s some pretty cosmic stuff going on here! If this is just the middle game in this world, I’d love to read about the endgame.

Middlegame is a complex and thought-provoking novel that defies easy categorization. If you’re in the mood for something unusual, I strongly recommend Middlegame.

I did something with this book I don’t normally do because I didn’t know how I felt about this book and what to say: I read what others were saying before I wrote my review. I have to say upfront that this was not really my type of book. I try very hard not to read books that aren’t my type because I feel it’s hard to give a review to something that isn’t your genre/type/etc. to others that do like that. I was on the fence about reading this, and I should have stayed there. However, I’ll say what I think those who would like it need to hear. As with all the books I’ve read by Seanan McGuire, this book was well-written, the characters were all multi-faceted and complex, and the plot was extremely interesting (if this is your type of plot; I can see that even if it isn’t my type). I did think the book was longer than it needed to be, but maybe that was just me. One thing I always find with this author is that her writings are very unique; she has a great imagination. So, yes, I do recommend this book for those who like this type and was provided a complimentary copy which I voluntarily reviewed.

"Numbers are simple, obedient things, as long as you understand the rules they live by. Words are trickier. They twist and bite and require too much attention. He has to think to change the world. His sister just does it."

Books about siblings really hits me in the right places, and Middlegame is no exception for that. It's raw, fascinating, and endearing. The world building is a marvel to see unfold as well as how the characters were fleshed out. We get to see their relationship develop in the course of the narrative. This is my first read of Seanan McGuire and I must say this won't definitely be my last. (A little cliche I know) Middlegame is a mustread to scifi fans!