Amy Imogene Reads's Reviews > Middlegame

5 reality-bending stars

How in the world do I write this review? The person who just finished this is both the person who started and simultaneously someone new. (A nod to the book, a nod to my feelings.) Middlegame is full of contradictions, belief, soul-forged truth, and an exploration on what we mean when we create myth.

Writing: ★★★★★
Concept: ★★★★★
Pacing: ★★★★★ (It was only ★★ until I finished the book and reflected)
Execution of themes: ★★★★★

Middlegame is a novel for those of us who are looking for the spark of the Other that laces every page of Every Heart A Doorway. If you were not a fan of McGuire's novella series, I strongly feel like you will have similar issues with Middlegame, if not for the same reasons.

Middlegame is frustrating, feverish, overtly cloudy, and mind-bending in the way that only Seanan McGuire can be. What do you get when you splice time travel, parallel realities, chaos game theory, notions of what it means to be human, and a desire for the Other? Something frightening, unending, and heartrendingly beautiful. I spent the first third confused, the middle third learning, and the last third holding my breath. I almost wonder what kind of novel it would be if you read it backwards, chapter by chapter. I think the story would hold up.

Roger and Dodger are twins formed, not made, and are separated at birth in order to fulfill their true purpose on Earth at the hands of their creator, a creation himself and the man intent on fulfilling alchemy's Doctrine of Ethos on Earth. They need to become one and to stay separate, to fulfill their purpose and to keep their purpose from fulfilling. We go into the plot with almost no information, and I think that is one of the novel's strengths so I'll leave it at that. Trust in Middlegame to show you its way, in its own time, and for its own reasons.

The pacing of Middlegame can be described as a three-dimensional spiral, in the shape of a tornado. Imagine the spiral in your head—it starts out wide, with just one strand in the dark. It's slow. You don't have any frame of reference. Then on your second loop around, it's a bit tighter, and you can see the points of connection between your current place and where you've come before—as well as a vague sense of a slightly-more-tightened coil beneath you. You go faster as the loops get tighter, and your sense of place and knowledge of the world compounds with each loop faster, faster. By the end, you're rolling around the same spot over and over and over and it's almost like you've stopped traveling any distance and are just retracing the same fevered spin, learning and unlearning the same steps in place.

I think that Middlegame might lose several readers on its first few revolutions of the spiral. The idea is big, and it is intentionally not well explained. If you can make it through the first few loops and start to see the patterns, I promise it's worth it.

In characteristic Seanan McGuire fashion, it is enough and it is not enough. It is beautiful and it is ugly. It is love and it is pain, there and not there, too slow and too fast, complete and undone. I can't get enough of her mind's creations. I would say that this is her magnum opus, the thing that she will never surpass, and yet... I bet she will.

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