Over and over again, we feel their pain as they walk right into the traps that have been set for them. They have no idea that they’re the creations of a shadowy cabal of alchemists, and we keep getting tantalizing foreshadowings of how this will result in tragedy for our heroes. The emotional core of the book is the relationship between Roger and Dodger, which is beautifully complex and heartbreaking. But ultimately I overcame my skepticism and dove into Middlegame, and I’m very glad I did. McGuire herself admits in the acknowledgements that she struggled with writing a pitch for the book. While the previews capture the essential points of the book, they don’t do a great job of describing it, and I’m not sure I did, either. Whoever wrote the jacket summaries for Middlegame seemed to have a lot of trouble describing the novel. If that sounds like a strange premise for a novel, it is. It’s never fully explained, but Reed’s plan involves waiting for the two embodiments of ethos to “mainfest” and then killing them to seize the Doctrine for himself. His means of controlling the world (and possibly reality itself) is creating two people who will embody the Doctrine of Ethos, an ill-defined alchemical theory that combines mathematics and language (hence Roger and Dodger’s specialties) to define reality. They’re the creations of arch-villain James Reed, an alchemist which, for our purposes, means a scientist/magician desperate for world domination. What Roger and Dodger don’t know is that they’re not human, at least not exactly. At around five years old, they discover that they can communicate telepathically. Roger is a gifted linguist, and Dodger a brilliant mathematician. It follows the lives of protagonists Roger and Dodger, two brilliant children who live on opposite sides of the country. Middlegame is McGuire’s latest novel, and it’s best described as urban science fantasy. I hadn’t read anything by Seanan McGuire before discovering Middlegame, but she’s an accomplished author who’s published a number of very well-received novels.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire