Book Review: MIDDLEGAME by Seanan McGuire

 

MIDDLEGAME by Seanan McGuire.  (Tor Books, May 2019) Hardcover, 528 pages.  ISBN # 1250195527 / 9781250195524 

 

 

Summary from the Goodreads website . . . .

 

New York Times bestselling and Alex, Nebula, and Hugo-Award-winning author Seanan McGuire introduces readers to a world of amoral alchemy, shadowy organizations, and impossible cities in the standalone fantasy, Middlegame.

 

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 realize 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.  

 

My review on the Goodreads website . . . .  

 

     I haven’t read everything, but all I have read by Seanan McGuire (and Mira Grant) has been extremely well-written and captivating. Middlegame is the indisputable (in an argument with myself) best of that group so far. 

 

     It contains everything that holds my interest in a good fantasy/science fiction hybrid of a novel: imaginative world-building, creative conflicts, parallels to current situations - global, political, and social - and a credible attempt to explain and rationalize the pseudo-science to make it seem believable and not so far-fetched. 

 

     Middlegame appears to be influenced by both The Wizard Of Oz and The Uncanny X-Men. McGuire even alludes to L. Frank Baum and creates a purpose for his writings of Oz that fits right into her world-building. McGuire is an admitted comics fan and loves the X-Men. All the major players in Middlegame are mutants of sorts, created and birthed in a blender of physically inherited traits and alchemically created properties. 

 

     McGuire creates a world where the laws of reality are under siege by a secret society, the Alchemical Congress, who blend science and magic in an effort to build a different global civilization. She lays down the history tracing the influence of alchemy back to Victorian times and the genius Asphodel Baker, a philosopher/alchemist/creator who writes a popular series of children's books (a la Oz) secretly coded with the building blocks to guide the right people down the Improbable Road to the Impossible City. 

 

     When she passed away, Baker turned over the direction of her efforts to her creation, the ageless adult James Reed, the major villain in Middlegame. Reed seems intent on attaining total control of the laws of reality, using a secret lab to constantly birth pairs of fraternal twins, seeking to find the right combination of brother and sister. Some he raises in the lab under controlled conditions. Others he finds suitable parents (that he can control) to adopt them. Some are kept together. Some are raised separately. 

 

     What exceeds all that excellence is the incredible character portraits, especially the two main protagonists - - Rodger and Dodger - - twins created by Reed and separated at birth. Middlegame at its heart and at its best is the story of Rodger and Dodger growing up individually and together (their communication by telepathy begins at age nine) until finally meeting up at the same college. They assist, compliment, and guide each other through maturation. One is a master of words, the other a master of math. 

 

     As their understanding of their true situation develops, Rodger and Dodger translate those tendencies into superhuman abilities utilizing the two skills. McGuire lets us into the heads of both characters. They are extremely complex, unique, admirable and flawed, but so likable that you'll worry about them. 

 

     The only quibble with Middlegame is that the villains are so extreme nobody could like them or empathize at any level. The two major villains are pure evil and motivated by power and greed. There is one other character that readers will begin to care about, who straddles the line between good and evil, order and chaos, and plays a prominent role throughout the second half of the book. 

 

     As the story progresses and readers learn of the development and setbacks for Rodger and Dodger, Middlegame touches on so many themes so skillfully that my head spins trying to catalog them all. Here's a partial list: love, power, sacrifice, bonding, intelligence, cooperation, support. 

 

     To top all of that off, McGuire tells the story through different time periods, jumping back and forth through certain moments in Rodger and Dodger's life. Readers get a hint of the ending at the very beginning of the book, so throughout reading we know what's coming and have to patiently watch as the characters figure it all out. 

 

     Before everything comes to a satisfactory end, time itself becomes manipulated and different scenarios play out. Masterful, and highly recommended.