I enjoyed this very much. Seanan McGuire is just one of those authors that is very underappreciated. Sure she gets a ton of recognition in the science fiction and fantasy communities, but I feel like so many of her works are accessible for people who just enjoy an excellently written, thought provoking book. Middlegame is just such a book. Yes, it is fantastic, with the alchemy and magical artifacts, but it has so many great underlying themes to it that most book fans would enjoy.

I think one of my favorite things about McGuire is her lyrical writing style, and her ability to create a poetic dialog. It makes her stories feel like they have weight to them, even when she's writing her urban fantasy series. In this story, she breaks away from it a little bit, but she turns on that style when there's something about to happen. It is an important signal, because there's a lot of ideas crammed into this book, and it helped prepare me for the emotional drop kicking she does.

There's so much to like about this book. If you're a fan of her Wayward Children novellas, this is right up your alley. If you're looking for a horror fantasy about sticking with the other half of your soul (embodied to perfection in the twins Rodger and Dodger) through thick and thin, then this is for you. If you'd like to take a break from traditional fiction for a smart and beautifully written fantasy, then have at it.

Just read it. You'll not regret you did.

I received a complimentary ARC copy of Middlegame by Seanan McGuire from NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge in order to read and give an honest review.

Being an avid fan of Seanan McGuire already, I have to say she has definitely outdone herself. McGuire’s books have it all, perfect prose, brilliant plots, engaging worlds and multi-faceted characters and the same is true for her new book, Middlegame.

As always this dark and whimsical story like most of her work is so well written and incredibly intelligent that it fully engages you with topics that challenge you on all levels.

James Reed an alchemist and apprentice to the once great Asphodel Baker who created him. Reed becomes convinced that he can create and control a diety that would give him control and power. He decides to create twins, each an important half of a whole, but to keep them together in the past has not produced the results he’s desired. Enter his middle set of twins, Roger Middleton and Dodger Cheswich. Each perfect prodigies in their own areas. Roger, awkward and shy excels in languages, reading and making sense and meaning from words but struggles with mathematics. Dodger is his opposite a passionate math genius who is isolated yet bold but struggles with English and reading. Even though placed on opposite sides of the country Roger in Massachusetts and Dodger in California one day she finds a way to open her mind and step inside of Rogers mind seeing the world through his eyes. Their quantum entanglement begins with them helping each other with homework but leads them to a friendship like no other. Both become incredibly reliant on each other’s friendship but they are separated when the powers that be feel they are getting too close. The story unfolds complete with near-death experiences, chance encounters, murder, mayhem and time resets creating a brilliantly compelling and twisted plot that will keep you turning pages.

So unique this is a story unlike anything I have read and it definitely challenges the reader to step outside their comfort zone. I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for something clever, exciting and brilliantly crafted.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire is a standalone novel set in a world similar to the real world, but bursting with alchemy. As far as I’m aware, it is not linked to any of McGuire’s other books or series.

Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story.

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.

The opening of this book grabbed me immediately with the in media res working particularly well thanks to the unusual timeline structure of the book. While we do get a lot of the main story in chronological order, it is interspersed with bits that come out of order, as well as the point of view sections of the antagonist and a thematically-linked children’s fairytale. Overall it makes for an interesting reading experience. That said, I did feel like the book dragged a little in the middle and to me it felt quite long, which is the worst thing I can say about it. (Note, also, that it is objectively on the long side, but it still should not have felt that way.)

Back to the content, this is a story of alchemically created twins, separated by the length and breadth of the USA, and left to grow up in isolation. They were created to channel immense power for their maker but a lot of their upbringing was left to chance. We follow them through their lives as they learn about each other, push each other away, meet by chance, push each other away and so forth. At first I found the story a little confusing — while the start grabbed me, it took a little while to fully understand what was happening. Then I grew more invested in the characters and wanted to know what would happen next, despite the slower middle section. The climax came not a page too late, to kick off the last portion of the book.

This is a dark fantasy book, shading to the horrific, that I expect fans of McGuire’s other books will enjoy. In general tone I found it most similar to the Wayward Children books, although the story structure (and length) was quite different. It’s certainly not science fiction horror like the Mira Grant books are, though this was not immediately apparent to me when I started reading. All in all, a structurally interesting read that I recommend to fans of dark fantasy.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: May 2019, Tor.com
Series: No.
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

I present to you: my new favorite book! Not just favorite of the month, or favorite of the year (though it is that too), no, this is a book that easily makes my top 10, if not top 3 list of all time, it’s THAT good.

MIDDLEGAME is the mother of all tragedy-siblings stories and if you know me, I LOVE those kind of stories. Not very far into it, and my heart was already close to bursting while reading about these kids, these lonely nerds, who found each other and became friends, only to loose each other again, and again. Roger and Dodger are just. SO. DAMN. PRECIOUS. and they don’t deserve all this pain. Damn you McGuire, I did not expect THAT amount of feels.
These poor broken souls, so alone, clearly missing their other half without even knowing they aren’t whole, found a place in my heart basically from the first page and seeing how someone messed with their life, left them in the dark about so many things, manipulated them, HURT them, had me close to tears constantly.

“Everything is perfect.
Everything is doomed.”

It’s not made easier with these constant reminders of impending doom. That was really just plain mean. It’s like an awful accident happening right in front of you and you just can’t look away from it even if you wanted to.

What messed with me even more was how much I loved the villains. I hated them with a passion for what they did to those poor kids, but damn I love me a fully fleshed out, deliciously dark psychopath. I had immense fun reading about their actions when it wasn’t Dodger or Rodger getting hurt by them.

MIDDLEGAME features an epic blend of scifi and fantasy and is one of the most clever stories I’ve ever read. Time travel always comes with its own kind of weirdness and MIDDLEGAME doesn’t disappoint in the mind-fuckery department. The whole book seems just very thought out and well planned with the sometimes non-linear telling. Time travel/manipulation has to be done right and I’ve rarely seen it done as exceptionally well as McGuire did here. The added alchemy only makes it all the more fun.

The book inside the book is pure genius. The parallels to the overall plot are all there while secretly telling you more about the world and the alchemy.

There are GREAT books, there are books that you finish and make you think you’ve found a new favorite, and then there is MIDDLEGAME. This book is just on a completely different level. I loved it right from the start and knew this would be a favorite. Closing this book after the last page only left me with two options: massive book hangover or immediate reread. I don’t say this about many books, but this was just perfect in every sense for me. It tugged my heart, I felt at home, it was brutal and made me feel ALL the things, and coming back to it after taking a break just felt…right.
This is a new favorite, one I’ll return to on a regular basis for sure.

Whoa. This is a complex novel full of giant themes. What is reality and what is fantasy? What is magic and what is science? Are they one and the same? What is the purpose of existence. This story is told with a deft hand and is told remarkably well. Science fiction or science fantasy? Time travel on purpose to rewrite history? You need to keep your wits about you to focus on the threads. Twins with a deeper connection than birth can provide… meet and forget time and again. Two parts of one whole. And a whole lot of trouble.

It is a story that is thought provoking, complicated and fascinating. It is deeply disturbing and bloody and scary as hell. A great read. It put me in mind of Jekyll and Hyde, and of Dr Frankenstein.

If both sides of the coin are Frankenstein’s monster… What if the Doctor who created them is Hyde and not Jekyll?

Middlegame is the kind of all-encompassing fantasy novel that draws you in from the start, filling your senses with magic and haunting visuals. It’s dark fantasy to the core, giving us a set of characters whose evil purposes mesmerize. This world of alchemy doesn’t waste time on the pretty bits of magic, focusing instead on reanimation and the transference of powers in order to power a world-dominating organization.

The story operates in the same vein as Good Omens, introducing us to two characters who have the fate of the world in their hands and don’t know it. As children, they have a spooky dynamic, with each providing balance to the other. The third protagonist is a terrifying creation who won’t stop until he controls the world, complete with a sidekick straight out of your nightmares. Their twisted web of a story is wickedly entertaining.

I don’t want to give too much away, so I’ll stop here. In general, it’s a fascinating read that needs as little prior knowledge as possible, in my opinion. Go into it knowing it’s a wild ride and at the end, you’ll be amazed at the scope of such a well-drawn world of wonders and horrors alike.

Review to be published on 5/5: https://reviewsandrobots.com/2019/05/06/middlegame-book-review

My first non-Wayward Children book by Seanan McGuire and I really liked it. Sometimes this was too long, and there were things that I didn't understand (the whole Doctrine of Ethos and Invisible City thing, for example), but overall this was great. There are moments when it's confusing, like how things get re-set, but that gets explained in the end. And this is one of the best uses of The Wizard of Oz in a long time, and more plausible in a way than the whole gold/silver standard argument, debunked here (http://thewizardofoz.info/wiki/About_the_Oz_Books#Is_it_true_that_The_Wizard_of_Oz_was_written_as_a_political_tract.3F).

I've seen some reviews that argue that neither Rodger nor Dodger are likable, but honestly, were they meant to be?

eARC provided by publisher.

The Good: A fantasy of alchemy; story-within-a-story; ambitious plot
The Bad: Simple villain
The Literary: New vocabulary words; interesting analogies

Roger is a natural with words, language, and story. A continent away, a little girl with the same birthday, Dodger, understands the world through numbers and math. Though they don’t know it, they are twins, created through alchemy by Reed, who has a plan to raise the brother and sister to their full potential, to harness the power of the universe through the Doctrine.

I’m already a big fan of Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series, and I expected to really like this book. She has a way of portraying the loneliness of a smart child with clueless parents and of capturing the magic of unexpected places. Middlegame is all of those things on top of a suspenseful race against time to meet your sibling, become gods, and defeat your maker. The story itself is great, and the structure of the novel is nonlinear, with alternating multiple timelines and POVs that ramp up the tension. The ambitious plotting skillfully unravels key backstory, while moving the present in unexpected directions, all with great clarity.

I love From Over the Woodward Wall, the fantastical story-within-the-story, and I’m ready to get my hands on a copy and read about the land of Up and Under. I know the fictional children’s book series are the secret alchemical teachings of Asphodel, Reed’s mentor, but I also just want to know all about Avery and Zib’s adventures.

If you grew up with Dorothy on the yellow brick road, it’s time to take the journey to the Impossible City in all its gold and mercury glory!

Dark, complex, complicated and engrossing. Middlegame by Seanan McGuire is a brilliantly constructed and deeply engaging novel.

Roger is a genius with words. He lives in Boston. His twin Dodger is mathematically brilliant and lives in California. Separated at birth, they manage to reach out and find each other over and over again.

Roger and Dodger have been created by a brilliant, powerful and extremely scary alchemist James Reed. He has plans for his creations unless they can figure out their destiny and seize control of it first.

For fans of Seanan McGuire, Middlegame is longer, complex, stand-alone novel. The story took a little bit of patience. Told out of sequence, the reader is carried along for the ride as our main characters learn to understand themselves. I love a novel that forces me to pay attention and pick up clues along the way. Roger and Dodger were oddly likeable characters and I enjoyed watching each of them relate to each other and the world around them. Despite some very gruesome and heartbreaking scenes, I was very invested in the story and anxious for the conclusion.

I really enjoyed this novel and highly recommend it. I can’t wait to suggest it to my library patrons. 5 stars.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

<em>Middlegame</em> is weird and challenging, and I loved it.

In <em>Middlegame</em>, Dodger and Roger are creations, but they spend most of their lives not knowing this. They were created by a powerful alchemist, himself a creation of a powerful, game-changing alchemist, and they have a specific purpose in life -- to manifest the alchemical concept of the Doctrine of Ethos.

Huh?

Yup, that was my reaction... but the confusion is part of the experience of this book, and I was happy to just go with it. Roger and Dodger each have a gift -- language for Roger, math for Dodger. Raised on opposite sides of the country by adoptive parents, they discover a psychic connection as young children, and as they grow up, their bond develops, strengthens, and becomes powerful, dangerous, and more and more inexplicable. Meanwhile, Reed and his allies monitor the pair carefully, charting their progress toward manifestation, making sure to keep them apart when their progress threatens the greater goals of the project.

It's all just so twisty and timey-wimey and mind-bending and GOOD. And as always, I love Seanan McGuire's writing. Does she have a bit of Roger's ability to create reality through her words? All signs point to yes.

Middlegame is thrilling, befuddling, emotional, and exciting, and overall a great read. Check it out!

WARNING: it's unpopular opinion time again!I never in the world expected to end up writing a DNF review for Middlegame. I absolutely adore the Wayward Children series and while I've yet to try her other work, I had full confidence this new story was going to be another winner. All those raving reviews and 5 star ratings only reconfirmed that belief... But I guess it wasn't ment to be. First of all I have to stress that I feel really bad about the decision to DNF, especially since I almost never have to resort to such a drastic decision and Middlegame is such a highly anticipated title. Trust me, I haven't taken this decision lightly,and I have really tried to overcome my initial feelings and warm up to the story. But after a second, third and fourth chance, I'm throwing in the towel at 41%. I'm very happy most people seem to be having a complete opposite experience from mine though. It's easy to deduct Middlegame is able to provoke very strong reactions; either you get the story and you absolutely adore every single page, or you feel like a mighty confused heap of mess and are left clueless and lost in the woods. Spoiler: I'm part of the second group. Again, I'm feeling really bad for having to take this decision, but it is what it is I guess.I'm having a hard time properly expressing why I struggled so much with this story, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that (especially in the beginning) I had no idea what I was reading. I was extremely confused and frustrated by the fact I didn't understand what all those different characters and events had to do with each other, and with the fantastical elements left without a proper explanation it was mostly guesswork and question marks instead of me starting to understand the world. Middlegame can mostly be classified as urban fantasy with sci-fi elements, although some POVs are definitely hardcore fantasy. Those are without doubt the most confusing ones as no proper explanation was offered (or at least up to that point). I admit things got slightly better with some POVs, especially when we follow Roger and Dodger, as they offer an almost 'normal' world where things are easier to understand. I loved that Roger is all about words, that Dodger is a math genius and how they are connected. I wasn't a real fan of the writing style, although their chapters are probably the most readable. I really disliked those chapters with Reed, but again part of the problem was that I felt information was missing and I couldn't properly understand it. Ever read a sequel without reading the first book, finding yourself confused all the time because you are missing crucial information? That was how I felt most of the time while I was trying to read Middlegame. Again, I seem to be the exception here as most people seem to love this story, so don't give up on Middlegame on my account. Just remember that if you do find yourself being a confused pile of mess when you are reading it, you are not the only one.

Seanan McGuire’s latest novel Middlegame is a very ambitious novel.  It reads like equal parts science fiction and fantasy, and is a wild ride from start to finish.  It features twins separated at birth who somehow have the ability to telepathically communicate with one another, as well a man who wants to use the twins to help him carry out his ambitious and perhaps delusional plan to become a god and control the universe.  If that isn’t enough to pique your curiosity, Middlegame also features alchemy, time loops, and its fair share of ruthless killers.

This was my first time reading one of McGuire’s novels, but after seeing so many stellar reviews for the author’s Wayward Children series, I fully expected to love Middlegame.  That said, however, I unfortunately didn’t love it nearly as much as I was expecting to.  I can’t put my finger on exactly why it wasn’t a great read, but part of it was because I just felt like I had to work way too hard to keep everything that was going on straight in my mind.  The plot is very complicated and twisty, and then time starts to twist as well, which made everything all the more complicated, and at a certain point, my brain just screamed “Enough!”  On top of that, I felt like the pacing was slow in places which didn’t help since the book is over 500 pages long.

That said, however, even though I didn’t love the read because it confused me a few too many times for my liking, there were quite a few things I did enjoy.

I love how wild and original the overall concept of the novel is.  On one level, it reminds me of Frankenstein, with James Reed using his alchemical skills to create children that can help him achieve his goal.  His actions and motivations are unnatural and more than a little creepy, but yet fascinating at the same time.  On another level though, Middlegame reminds me of nothing I’ve ever read before. The idea of this Doctrine of Ethos being the key to controlling the Universe and that Reed can somehow harness its power and become a God if he places half of the doctrine in each child just blew my mind.  Reed was a disturbing yet almost mesmerizing character just because he’s so passionate that his goal is 100% achievable and is clearly totally okay with the idea of using his homemade children as science experiments and with eliminating anyone or anything that happens to get in his way.

While I found Reed completely disturbing, I found the other main characters, twins Roger and Dodger, quite endearing, especially the connection they shared.  The implanting of half the Ethos Doctrine in each of them has left Roger as a master of all language and communication, while Dodger is an absolute genius at math. There is literally no math problem she can’t solve.  Put them together and they’re pretty much unstoppable.  As soon as they are “born,” Reed separates them.  He has several sets of twins that he’s experimenting with so this “separation” variable is specific to Roger and Dodger’s experiment.  Except that they somehow manage to connect telepathically even though they live thousands of miles apart.  No matter how many times they get re-separated, they manage to find each other again.

Even though I felt frustrated and confused sometimes by everything that was going on in Middlegame, that bond between Roger and Dodger is what really kept me turning the pages. I was just so invested in them and ultimately wanted them to realize they were pawns in Reed’s deadly game and somehow turn the tables on him and stop the madness.

While Middlegame wasn’t a book that I loved, I did enjoy the read overall and would definitely recommend it to fans of science fiction and really to anyone who enjoys a wild and twisty read that makes you put on your thinking cap.  It has also intrigued me enough about McGuire's unique brand of storytelling that I definitely plan to read the Wayward Children series.

3.5 stars Mind Blowing. Complicated, time warping, intense, twisted, genetically bent, confusing, scientific, mathematical, controlling, maniacal, murderous and so much more. This was a lot of book. I will be re-reading it, there was so much I need a second pass. Sadly it wasn't all perfect, it felt too long. The goal a place that was never explained. I waited to find out about the mysterious Imposible City that was mentioned over and over, it had to be great right ? I read the whole book and still don't get what it is. The truth was poked at so many times without resolution, till the end. The time jumping took me back so many times, restarting, going over the same event again. It was an amazing concept, but lost me in the process.

People built from parts of other, genetically designed for the ultimate twisted scientific tests. Twins born, are torn apart, kept together, tortured, or... ? They are the key to power. The story follows one pair Roger and Doger. One is a mathematical genius, the other a language genius. They have that weird bond twins have but elevated. Oh their backstory on this is so twisted. Mostly the story follow this pair, as they discover each other, who and what they are. I shuttered as each new truth finally unfolded, some were just horrific.

I don't want to ruin this for you, I'm stopping here.

I picked this book to read by cover and author's name alone. I had no clue what it was about I didn't even read the book blurb.

Trigger Warning: suicide, depression and violence

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.

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.

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.

First of all, a HUGE HUGE HUUUGEEE thank you to Netgalley and Tor Publishing for letting me have an ARC of this wonderful novel in exchange of an honest review!! All the following opinions are my own.

Middlegame is a book by Seanan McGuire that escapes the art of explanation. I cannot tell you, for the death of me, what it means. What it's about. What happens in it. I can only tell you that at the beginning there were two children, a girl and a boy, a brother and a sister. And they were everything between each other. Math and language. Order and chaos. At the end, sometimes there is nothing. Sometimes everything. And this book is all about the Middlegame! *wink wink*

If you've read any book by Seanan McGuire before, I don't need to tell you about the sheer brilliance that is her writing style. I love how perfectly balanced it is with its fluidity and I just can't get enough of it. This is a line from almost the end of the book. No spoilers, but just read it.

"The world is the color of mercury, and the embers from the all-consuming flame are like an improbable road leading upward, ever upward, into the infinite and ever-forgiving sky."

I MEAN... WHO WRITES SO WELL! HOW!?!?! That's the real secret if you ask me.

With Middlegame, Seanan McGuire manages to create some really complex narratives following only a five or six odd characters, but they're so compelling and their lives are so entangled and complicated, that the length of the book seems appropriate to tell their entire story. McGuire adapts concepts of a lot of science fiction novels and combines them with the fantastical element of alchemy in this book and she just takes it all to another level of excellence.

You know that feeling you get when you read a book so smart, you're just in awe of it the whole time? That's Middlegame for you, kids! That's Middlegame for you.

Middlegame is not the type of book I’d generally read but my friends LOVE Seanan McGuire and her Wayward Children series. When this book became available I knew this was my chance to give her a chance. And I gotta admit as weird as this book was I loved it! The best kind of weird! Look forward to reading more by this author real soon!

Thank you Netgalley for an advance copy for my honest review!

Actual Rating: 2.5 stars

As a fan of Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series, I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, while Middlegame contains some interesting ideas, the execution left something to be desired. In a nutshell, it was far too long, the characters felt too distant, and the villains were much less creepy than intended. I will get into all of this in detail, but one thing I will say for this book is that it will likely generate some kind of a response. It's a strange book, full of twisted, power-hungry alchemists, children who aren't quite human, and a heavy dose of gruesome violence. The strangeness and violence will turn off some readers, but I'm not necessarily opposed to those elements.

Thematically, Middlegame attempts to do some interesting things, exploring the handling of gifted children, the nature of morality, using science to play god, adoption, the intersection of math and language, and the problems associated with seeking power among others. I think these ideas are interesting, but ultimately I didn't feel like they took us anywhere. Perhaps it is a problem of trying to do to much (which you will see is a repeated theme) but everything played on the surface without getting to a satisfying depth.

Ironically, the book itself feels very overwritten. It is overly descriptive (while I love the authors use of descriptive language in shorter works, in this case it should have been done more sparingly), there are too many point of view characters, and too many scenes are detailed at length when we could have done with fewer. I think if this book did away with most of the villain points of view and cut back on description and unnecessary scenes, we would have had a much stronger book at closer to 350 pages rather than 500+.

So lets talk about the villains. There are two primary villains (Leigh and Reed) with perspectives and I wish they were more mysterious because I think that would have made them more creepy. It is hard to write a compelling villain POV unless they are morally gray characters with complex motivations and fully-fleshed personalities. We definitely did not get that here. Rather, Leigh and Reed feel kind of one-dimensional in their evil, in a sort of mustache-twirly way. Leigh is very bloodthirsty and we are supposed to find her very disturbing, but because of the way her perspective and a actions are handled, I rarely had much of an emotional response. For the most part I was thinking "yeah, yeah, we get it. She kills people and does creepy things. Next?" I think if Leigh and Reed had instead been shadowy characters where we see more the results of their actions, it might have been much more disturbing.

Arguably, the main characters in the book are Rodger and Dodger. Twins separated at birth after being created in a lab to embody an alchemical concept. The most interesting and compelling part of this book was Rodger and Dodger as children. Their burgeoning relationship, their struggles being gifted children and being adopted, all of that was really interesting, but then I never felt like I got the payoff that I wanted. Instead we kept jumping ahead in time to them as teenagers, college student, grad students, and older adults. Never did they feel again quite like fully fleshed out characters who were relatable, always at arms length from the reader. Part of this may have been the writing voice, which is very self-conscious of its existence, but I really think that the characters at older ages just weren't as well-developed. As a result, I had a hard time caring very much about their outcomes.

I think this is going to be a polarizing book for a variety of reasons. For me, the problems were not with the content, but rather with the way that content was executed. I wish this book had sat longer before being written because I think there were the seeds of some really interesting things that perhaps weren't ready to be written yet. I received an advance review copy of this book via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Major content warnings in this book for murder, violence, self-harm, attempted suicide, animal cruelty, torture, killing of children, depictions of blood and gore, rituals etc.

Middlegame is… confusing. The premise is intriguing and the writing is very engrossing, but the world-building is without enough development. This is a character driven story, so the characters are quite complex and layered, but the story doesn’t hold up when the world-building makes very little sense. The slow pace and shifting timelines also take a bit of getting used to and can be quite confusing at times.

Seanan McGuire is an amazing writer, but Middlegame doesn’t reflect her talent in creating unique and detailed worlds. The narrative worries more about talks of mathematics than it does about explaining why Roger and Dodger are the way they are and the reason behind their existence. The plot also takes quite a bit of time to get going, as the chapters shift POVs and timeline, so there are a lot of starts and stops that don’t work well to establish a smooth narrative.

I am disappointed. I’m sure lots of people will really enjoy this and just how unique it is, but it doesn’t work for me. The character development is very very well done and executed and I actually really liked Roger and Dodger as characters. The dynamic between them and how their relationship changes as they grow is probably the one thing I liked in the entire novel.

The world-building is just… a lot of cool words and concepts are thrown around, but McGuire doesn’t really spend much or any time explaining them. A few things get mentioned again and again and given no context as to how they work or why they’re so important. The alchemy bits are pretty interesting, but they don’t stand alone and those sections aren’t enough to carry the length of the novel. Especially when it’s 400 pages of maths and Roger and Dodger meeting and going their separate ways again.

There is quite a bit of action nearing and at the end of the novel, but some bits feel rushed. There isn’t all that much impact to them. The lack of world-building contributes to some moments falling flat and also adds a bit of confusing in regard to the timeline and what’s really going on as the story reaches its conclusion.

In the end, Middlegame doesn’t work for me. I need more explanations to fully immerse myself in a story and enjoy it, and McGuire worries more about developing her characters than creating a world with substance. I’m sure some readers will love this, but I’m sadly not one of them.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire is based on a simple premise: words and math control reality. What might happen if an alchemist bent on world domination forced the natural principles of these concepts, known as the Doctrine of Ethos, into human form, where they could be manipulated and controlled and thereby used to control the world? These human embodiments of the Doctrine of Ethos, the twins Roger and Dodger, grow up completely unaware of what they are or why they were created. Roger understands the world through words, Dodger through math, but as far as they know, they’re just unusually intelligent people. However, as they grow up and their abilities and psychic connection become harder and harder to explain away, everything leads them farther along the improbable road, closer to the Improbable City, and nearer to the destruction of the world.

When I saw that Tor was offering advance copies of a new Seanan McGuire book on NetGalley, I think I actually shrieked. I have loved McGuire’s other books because she comes up with truly amazing premises and follows through on the promise of those premises with incredible, engaging stories. Then I read the description and thought, “Huh.” It didn’t immediately appeal to me on description alone, but I was excited enough about the prospect of a new Seanan McGuire book that I decided that I wanted to try it anyway. Now that I have finished the book, I know that I’m glad I read it, but I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it and even less certain how to explain it. This is the kind of story that defies description, due to both complexity and the fact that the most critical facts would spoil the big reveals of the story.

I loved the characters and I ripped through this book in a few days. It was fascinating following Roger and Dodger and exploring both the different ways they understand the world and the different ways that the world reacts to them and shapes their experiences. In particular, I appreciated the way McGuire acknowledged the different ways society reacts to and treats intelligent women versus intelligent men and how that impacts Roger and Dodger’s childhoods. Parts of the story were heartbreaking, parts were funny, and despite the fantastical and horror elements of the narrative, the characters and the way they reacted to the situations they encountered felt incredibly realistic. I should also admit that I will read almost anything Seanan McGuire for the sheer gorgeousness of her writing. It’s dramatic and horrific and captivating and Middlegame completely delivers on everything I love about McGuire’s writing.

Despite everything that I enjoyed, I spent the first half of Middlegame very confused. For those that enjoyed the Wayward Children series and the way it plays with the fairy tales and portal fantasies we already know, Middlegame also wraps its story around the narrative of a beloved children’s fantasy. The catch is that the reader doesn’t know the narrative because it’s a children’s series created within the world of the story, similar to the Fillory stories in Lev Grossman’s Magicians series. The characters know the story that the twins are unknowingly mirroring and we get glimpses of the stories of the Up and Under (similar to Oz) throughout the story, but I kept getting hung up on the idea that the story might make so much more sense if I had read this story within a story. There are elements of the story in Middlegame that never get fully explained and other big elements that don’t become clear until fairly late in the narrative. I finished the book and I still don’t know what the Improbable City is or how to explain the Improbable Road, despite the fact that both of these play a major part in the story. This can make the first half of the book seem slow and while reading that half I wasn’t even sure if I liked the story. That said, after I hit that halfway point I was so engaged that I didn’t want to stop reading even to go to work. Ultimately, the decision to keep certain things back from the reader felt necessary because the characters are going through that same confusion and if the reader already knew what was happening, it would lessen the impact when the characters finally figure it out.

As much as I enjoyed Middlegame overall, I think whether or not you will enjoy it is entirely dependent on how willing you are to go along for the ride and trust that if you stick with it, Seanan McGuire will take you on an interesting journey whether you understand it or not.

I really wanted to like this book because I tend to enjoy McGuire’s novels- but I couldn’t even finish it. The dialogue seemed forced, the characters un-relatable, and the plot was too confusing to fully grab my attention.
I can see the appeal for avid fantasy readers, but the inconsistencies were difficult to ignore.