Middlegame

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 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.

Okay just to start this off, let me show you what I wrote on Goodreads for my review right after I finished this book:

“i don’t have words. oh my god. oh my GOD. help. i haven’t read a book this good in….i don’t know how long. I DON’T HAVE WORDS I JUST WANT TO SCREAM”

So….can you tell that I love this book? BECAUSE I LOVE THIS BOOK. Like I said, it’s been a really long time since I read a book that was THIS. GOOD. I haven’t fallen in love with a book like I have with this one in….ages. It’s funny, I knew it was going to be good since a lot of friends who have similar tastes to me loved it but I feel like I got sucker punched. But like, in a good way? Like I expected it to be good but not like this. Alright I’m rambling sorry, let’s get down to the real stuff – like what this book is actually about??

As the synopsis says, this book is centered around a boy (Roger) and a girl (Dodger). They are twins with very special abilities: Roger is extremely gifted at words and language, and Dodger is a math genius. Oh, and they can also speak to each other in their minds. As they grow up, they are each other’s imaginary friends. Middlegame follows the two of them as the grow from small kids to adults, and explores how their powers grow and how their lives intersect with each other. For most of their lives, they don’t realize that they are the alchemical creation of James Reed (a VERY old alchemist who is an alchemical creation himself), who intends for them to be his tools to reach the Impossible City.

The fantasy elements to this story are really interesting. It is centered around alchemy, which I like since it’s kind of a blending of science and magic. And! Alchemy isn’t very popular in novels so I liked reading about something new to me. I will admit that at times it is confusing, when Reed (the main antagonist) talks about the Doctrine and the Impossible City, but I think that’s part of the draw of the novel. It’s a bit of a mystery and you can put some of your own interpretation on top of the foundation that is laid out.

At it’s heart though, this novel is about the relationship between Roger and Dodger. It explores many topics such as loneliness and isolation due to having gifts that others may not understand, and definitely trigger warning for suicide attempt. I like that this was not blown over, and realistically impacted both of their lives for the rest of the novel. Both of them have their own flaws which makes them even more relatable. Who needs perfect protagonists anyway? I loved that this book was about how a relationship between two people evolves and changes as each individual changes too.

I know this won’t be for everyone but PLEASE give it a go!! It’s definitely earned its place among my favorite books.