Tuesday 18 June 2019

Middlegame / Seanan McGuire

3 out of 5 stars
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.

I’m reluctant to admit that I didn’t adore something that Seanan McGuire has written. And I’m pretty sure that it’s not her, it’s me. I love her October Daye, InCryptid, and Wayward Children series and I expected to feel the same way about this book. Unfortunately, I think I may have read it at the wrong time--maybe a re-read at some future date will leave me more impressed.

There were an awful lot of moving parts in this one, lots of details in a complicated world and plenty of characters to keep track of. For me, it took a long while to connect with the main characters, maybe ⅔ of the way through the book. Finally, though, I felt it reluctantly click into place.

This felt to me like an uneasy work, straddling the gap between the Wayward Children series and McGuire’s work under the name of Mira Grant. There are definitely more horror related details in this one that would be more at home under the aegis of the Grant persona. 

But, if you, like me, love McGuire’s writing, you should definitely give this one a try. The writing is every bit as skilled as her other works and the ideas are good. As I say, I think it was just me who wasn’t in the proper state to appreciate this one. Your mileage may vary.

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