Middlegame

Roger and Dodger are alchemical creations. Born with a single purpose. To break the natural rules of the world and reach the impossible. Their creator, Reed, has tried over and over again to produce a pair of children able to change the world. And time and again he has failed. But then everything changes. Separated at birth, Roger and Dodger begin to show signs of success. A connection previous pairs have been unable to achieve. As they begin to realize their abilities, Reed manipulates their lives to serve his purpose. Moving the children as if they were chess pieces, risking their mentality, their health, their very being. Whatever the cost, the impossible will be his.

The overall tone of Middlegame is dark, edgy, and willing to push the limits of the genre. There is a mixture of horror elements bound together to make it an unsettling read. And by listening to the audiobook, the brilliant narration of Amber Benson helped embody the ominous presence of the characters. Not only did she capture various dialects, but she also pitched the voice of the alchemists in a way that made your skin crawl. Between the writing style and the narration, Middlegame became a disturbing and fascinating alchemic story.

The alchemy build up and explanations did take a while for me to process. Not all the pieces of the story were presented upfront. The timeline switched between various points in the main characters' lives. And while it fed into the overarching plotline, I struggled to understand it all. When listening to chapters focused on the alchemists, my mind would drift. Their use of alchemist verbiage and constant talks of the Doctrine lost me. Unfortunately, their sections did make up a large part of the book, so often the story hit a lull for me.

However, when Roger and Dodger were the focus, I was swept up in the complex and interwoven story of their lives. Both children are highly talented in their own ways. Roger is a master of language, granting him the ability to easily communicate with others. Dodger on the other hand sees the world through a Math lens. Numbers and calculations form their own sort of language for her, yet it also keeps her apart from her peers. When their minds begin to connect the ways in which they balance one another are artfully portrayed. Then again, so are the ways they can spiral and disconnect from the world when they are no longer supporting one another. It's a delicate balance and the scales often tip to one side, showcasing the horror of what happens when the experiment begins to go wrong.

While the story didn't always keep my attention, the amount of apprehension and friction Roger and Dodger experienced as they discovered their true purpose kept me reading. I want to know more about these two characters, even if the foundations of the alchemy that created them don't interest me as much. I'll give book two a try now that Middlegame has laid down the foundation of the world. And I would still recommend those who enjoy dark fantasy stories that focus on mental health and experimentation to give this try.

I am sitting in stunned silence. I finished dashing through the last thirty pages of Middlegame about 5 mins ago' I now have the most unsettling feeling of, “Now what? Please story; don't end.” Alas, it did as it would have to. And I am sitting here twiddling my thumbs and wishing for so much more. I miss Roger and Dodger already.

Middlegame is as it is purported to be, it is a middle, the midway, the equidistant point between the beginning and the end. The term middlegame refers to space between the opening and endgame in chess. A space that often blends into both the opening and the endgame where there is not a sharply seen divide. It is an interesting play on definitions. The middle of a story, the middle of a chess game, and the story in its entirety is an elaborate chess game.

The middle is the most crucial part of most stories. Openings are but a fleeting moment that sends the characters on their path while endings are the explosion like a volcano after many years. Endings are the outcome. But the middle is the actual story. Middlegame is written about all the points in between for Roger and Dodger. Their tales are not done, although I have the sneaking suspicion that this story is a single book, not planned for a series.

I could tell you that this story is about twins, but so what. There are a million stories about twins. I could tell you it is about alchemy. Again, so what. It doesn't do any of it justice. So how about this, “Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come quickly to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story.” More so Rodger understands that naming something gives it power. Language in all its forms has power. “Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math.” Math is in every movement of a bird, thing of beauty; math is sunsets, waterfalls and the first cry from a newborn. Math is a creation. But Roger's powers of language allow him to solidify creations through words. They work together.

The intertwoven, multi-decade story is about the intertwining of to opposite forces whose lives, and love meshes together like the roots of a gnarled old oak tree. Rodge and Dodge need each other, and through McGuire's excellent writing we can see that need coalesce into a yearning and a struggle. Sometimes the intertwining to the two of them feels like iron band banded around them, other times the intertwining is a hug from a long departed loved one in arms you never want to let go again. All of this is under the watchful eye of Reed, an alchemist, whose plans to exploit them for his own game have been the spiderweb the twins have lived in their whole lives.

But love, curiosity, leadership –those are equally important,or they wouldn't exist. Natureabhors a vacuum.Nothing without purposehas been made.

I can't tell you many details from the plot save for Rodger, and Dodger have been pulled apart and pushed together most of their lives. In the pulling and pushing they have figured out mostly who they want to be, but only when the other is around can they obtain their full potential.

First, let's talk about the magnificent. Seanan McGuire is damned good at story creation only to be bested by her ability of character creation. The writing of this story is sumptuous, atmospheric, and thick with meaning. While most other writers are thin soup, Mcguires writing is thick dark chocolate pudding. To be poured over and savored mouthful by mouthful. The only small quibble that led me to drop the rating by one star was the pacing. The story felt very uneven in terms of speed. Some section dragged on like molasses, others over in a flash.

Also, thank you, McGuire, for writing a math-driven girl as to be something celebrated and not something to be ashamed of. So many stories take female characters and say that their love of math is cute or silly and something that should embarrass them. But, not so in this story. Dodgers love for math goes deep into her bones. It is who she is. There is nothing to feel shame for. I love that, and it is wonderfully refreshing to read. Go STEM!

I will miss this story, and I have fleeting hope that she will continue to write this series. But if she decides not to, thank you, Mcguire, for the beautiful book. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Okay fine, here it is. My previous “review” is at the bottom.

My major problem with Seanan McGuire's writing, specifically her long books, is how repetitive they are (examples/screenshots below). She repeats phrases/words or even says the same sentence in slightly different ways. She repeatedly brings up the same character trait over and over again. Not in a subtle way either, not in a way that demonstrates the trait and shows it in action but in a blatant telling that it's that character's trait. It results in her smacking the reader over the head repeatedly with what she wants us to know instead of being more nuanced and allowing us to engage with the information and infer the importance of different actions and thoughts.

For example, if we know a character has a thing for donuts, and the character eats a donut or mentions donuts or walks by donuts, every single time Seanan McGuire will also write “Ashley loves donuts, it's their favorite food, they'll choose it over any other option if they have the ability” like it's not already super obvious. And then if they eat any other food we get an explanation that even though they prefer donuts they also have to eat other food to survive so that's why they're eating other food and not a donut. Like no shit.

Middlegame is very Roger=Words, Dodger=Math, but there are less heavy-handed ways to show the reader those things. You can have a character perform an action or think a thought that makes sense based on what we know about them (perhaps Dodger calculating something super complex during a party, measuring ingredients for baking by sight, kicking ass at billiards... Or Roger mentioning or quoting dense literature/famous authors, solving or spouting interesting word puzzles, or using complex words/phrases - as it stands, he talks like an idiot most of the time) and leave it at that. Because the reader can understand that their actions support what was told to us, that Roger=Words and Dodger=Math. But any time something like that happens, McGuire also writes “Dodger understands numbers, Roger knows words” (yeah, we already know). It just makes me want to rip my hair out. It's like she wants to make sure no one misses the connection she's making or support she's providing for the character trait, which leaves the reader with a feeling of being hit over the head with the information. And as my friend said, it feels like the Rodger =words and Dodger=math was so superficial in how they equal those things.

Moving on, the alchemy was surface level, mostly consisting of the hand of glory, and seemed to rely on the reader having previous knowledge from other books. There wasn't even a satisfying explanation for the Improbable Road and Impossible City. Seriously, what are those things, what's the point, and how did they come to be? Oooooh, alchemy. Got it. But, how? What does that look like???

The villians were nonexistent and cartoonish. They never felt threatening and were defeated with very little effort. And they made incredibly stupid decisions. Why did Leigh think killing Dodger's parents would make her give up and surrender? You hold them hostage, not kill them! Killing them provides absolutely no motivation to surrender. I literally laughed out loud at that part.

And just, the end, what even was that? I don't understand why Roger and Dodger were like, “Let's wait.” Ummm what?

I have always loved the concepts Seanan McGuire comes up with, and that's why I continue to read her books. But honestly, I think I'm done with her full novels.

And now, I offer you a couple of examples of the repetition that annoys me so much



Why? Seriously, why write this sentence more than once?



0:00 PST means midnight! Have some faith in your reader to READ!

A variation of “knows/doesn't know/doesn't understand the words” is used about 50 times (not kidding, go ahead and count).

I really don't want to write this review because I'm still annoyed. Go check out this review instead: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2775699939?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=3

This book was all sorts of things to me - confusing, frustrating, engaging, interesting. At the end of it all, I'm not sure I understood 100% what the backstory was supposed to be - I'm not even sure if we're meant to understand. It was such a weird, weird journey. It was enjoyable and fascinating, definitely memorable though I wouldn't say particularly endearing or really giving one the warm fuzzies of a new love. This was like a mish-mash of the Wizard of Oz, X-Men, and Doctor Strange and/or Avengers.

I've only ever read three books in Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series and have enjoyed those well enough. I went into this one expecting a very different vibe from that one given that I had the impression this was meant to be more horror, more outright fantasy. I was a little surprised that the tone, the vibe of this one was very much similar to Wayward Children, especially at the very beginning when our protagonists are young kids. I can McGuire's interest in exploring that theme of childhood development and psychology, the traumas and struggles that children go through and the coping mechanisms that they put into place without even knowing what they're doing, and which may sometimes spill over into adulthood. This is still a huge part of Middlegame and though our protagonists eventually have bigger problems to deal with after they've grown up, they never quite forget or leave behind the events of their childhood.

The writing is engagingly descriptive, as McGuire's writing has always been. There's a lot of vivid imagery around here, especially when there're so much to perceive and tell in this world, like how Roger and Dodger experience their existences in completely different ways and how they intertwine occasionally. I did find that the writing got sometimes a little too dramatic and a bit repetitive, but that might just be a personal preference thing. During certain sequences, McGuire repeated certain phrases over and over again in the same passage or chapter to bring a point across. If done very minimally, I think this could drive a point cross, but I thought this was done a tad bit too much here that it dilutes the importance of each “important” phrase. Details: I got a little tired of reading, “There's so much blood.” everytime we skip back to the Book 7 interludes, and honestly I'm not really sure that the volume of blood was really all that important to the crux of the plot. What I liked much more was a bit of that repetition of, “How many times?” which I found more impactful and more relevant to the whole thing about Dodger and Roger having repeated their lives so many times, but that wasn't dwelled upon as much as “there's so much blood” unfortunately.

On a smaller scale, McGuire also uses that repetition to underline an emotional moment, for e.g. pulling a completely unrelated example off the top of my head and not quoting from the book: “... and she doesn't look back. She doesn't look back.” That's fine, I guess, I'm just not the biggest fan of that and it always sounds a bit too dramatic to me.

The pacing of the book was OK, though I always kept wondering if this could have been any shorter. This is a pretty long read and while the action never quite stops and nothing is really draggy, I feel like a large part of the length has to do with the style of narration and descriptions kinda dragging things out a bit. It's not a major problem, though I feel like it could've been perhaps more compact.

Roger and Dodger are the center of this book's universe in more ways than one. We spend almost all our times with them and watching them grow up, taking only an occasional jaunt to catch up on the book's antagonists. I did really like how fleshed out they were for most of the book, where we really delved into how childhood environment and circumstances can impact the way people, even those who are almost identical in every way, grow up. As the plot develops, they both kinda lose a bit of that human colour a bit when they become more aware of their talents, but I don't think I minded that because I was looking forward to some epic magical showdown. Erin was also a surprisingly complex character - dare I say even the most complex one in the whole lot? Leigh and Reed are fairly one-dimensional but we don't spend a lot of time with them so it's OK.

This is a very minor point but I was also kinda amused and just very slightly annoyed by how this book was meant to be encompass the world, the universe, reality itself - but we're so so centered in the United States. Heck, even when we were supposed to be separating twin babies “as far apart as geographically possible” (a paraphrased quote from the book), here I was expecting them to be somewhere in like Nepal and Canada, maybe. In fact, when Roger first says he's in Cambridge, I thought, huh having them in the USA and UK is kinda uninspired but okay. But no, he's actually in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so apparently “as far apart as geographically possible” simply meant on the opposite coasts of one country. There are other less obvious bits in the story that just felt very, very America-centric. I'm in two minds about this - on one hand, if McGuire didn't feel up to writing a character growing up in a completely different culture from her own experience, it makes sense that she just stuck to what she knew and I'd prefer that to half-baked attempts at trying to stick in, say, a South African upbringing if inadequate research was done. On the other hand, the cosmic scale this plot is supposed to be operating on just falls a little flat if we're just boxed up in a single country.

The ending was fine, although I actually kinda wanted to see a lot more, but I suppose it's not a bad thing if we didn't have some miraculous deus ex machina. Spoilery thoughts: I wanted to see Dodger and Roger really come into their manifestation and start pulling Leigh and Reed apart by math and reality alone, but I suppose it's not unrealistic that, still being human in some way, they couldn't possibly grasp the knowledge of how to use all their powers right from the get-go, even when they realized their potential for it. I liked the addition of Kim and Tim to their weird little family in the end, and I suppose that they'll have more of a role to play in the sequel.

I enjoyed the overall journey of getting to know the 2 MCs from childhood through adulthood to understand their struggles and triumphs and how their experiences shaped them and their choice despite the knowledge of their providence and purpose.

The moving timeline scenes were jarring for my brain to grasp initially but once the story unfolded and it was told to us it was happening (thanks for those chapter timestamps as well) all was good.

The ending was satisfying and hopeful. I would really like to read the A. Baker series Up and Under, then do a re-read of Middlegame to see if it provides further insight to the abundant references throughout the novel. Slick how there's a book reference in a novel that taunts my curiosity.

An interesting 3.5, to which I'll give the benefit of the doubt and raise to a 4. At times this was very good, but at others...something I can't put my finger on just missed its target. The ending in particular felt unsatisfactory; the conclusion felt like it came to early. I wanted a glorious finish but this felt like the minimum necessary to wrap up the story.

Now... this was a bit muddled by the fact that I have been reading this book on and off for a couple of months, and I have been reading a lot of other books together with it. This one should be read by itself, and rather quickly.
Now I understand the cover, though I don't think it's a good choice.
I found the alchemy part fascinating. Seanan made it sound real, and I like that.
I also like the fact that she opened the door for further adventures while finishing the story. I love how Seanan McGuire makes me expect things I don't expect :-D I mean, she has a unique way of seeing things. Most solutions aren't obvious. The conclusions and choices the characters make aren't predictable. Most of the time. I like that. She also widens the concept of a “happy ending”. Seanan McGuire's books aren't rosy and unicorn farts. They are pretty dark and some very horrible things happen. But it's not necessarily bad. Or, of course, it's bad, but one can have a happy ending, be content and enjoy life and see the beauty of it, even though some very horrible things have happened. I believe that is important because that's what human life is. Everyone suffers in some ways, and experiences pain and disappointment and depression and “bad things”, even though one could argue some people's “pain” is nothing compared to some other people's pain. It's all relevant, isn't it? Anyway, that's not all there is, and life is beautiful, and Seanan McGuire makes me remember it. I love her books.

Took me a minute to get into this book, but after about 50 pages I wanted to know more. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but there were aspects of it that I felt were more plot driven than character driven, which I enjoy in equal parts. I was also confused from time to time that I had to accept to move myself forward, but I would have rather had been fully understanding to give it five stars.

within 30 pages this writing was already grabbing me by the throat. from there it was just a ride i enjoyed every second of. from the characters and their development to this whacked out world to trying to figure out what the heck was going on, this book held my attention and stole my heart. one of my favorites forever