One of my favorite authors is back with a book quite unlike anything I’ve read before! Middlegame by Seanan McGuire is an adult fantasy novel starring a pair of twins imbued by alchemists with special powers as part of a plot to take over the world. If you’re familiar with McGuire from her Wayward Children series, this book is very different. It is ambitious and broad in scope with an experimental style that hops around between different timelines. But it does still have the signature elements that I love about McGuire’s works: in-depth explorations of nuanced characters, clever plays on classic tropes, and a certain tendency toward the macabre. Middlegame comes out tomorrow, May 7.
Roger has been gifted with words and languages all his life, while Dodger gains early recognition as a math prodigy. They live on opposite sides of the country and would never have known of each other’s existence, if it weren’t for one day in their childhood when Roger hears Dodger’s voice inside his head. Dodger helps him with his math homework and he saves her from failing English class, shoring up each other’s weaknesses. Together they would be unstoppable—which is why they need to be stopped before they can get to that point. Over the course of their lives, Roger and Dodger repeatedly come together before being scared apart again, either by outside forces or the fear of their own growing powers. But even more dangerous than what might happen if they embrace their powers is what will happen if they don’t. The alchemists who created Roger and Dodger plan to use the twins’ powers to control the universe. But the twins won’t let that happen—even if they have to bend reality and time itself to stop it.
Now, if you’re like me, your first thought on seeing this book was “What’s with the weird hand-candle on the cover, and where do I get one?” That, my friends, is a hand of glory. The alchemy depicted in Middlegame is of a brutal and macabre sort. The antagonists of the story, Reed and Leigh, are constructed beings assembled from disparate corpses a la Frankenstein’s monster. One of their favorite tools is the hand of glory, a gruesome object from 18th-century alchemy and folklore. Traditionally constructed from the hand of a corpse to aid in sneaking around, the hands of glory in Middlegame are specifically made from the corpses of murder victims—usually whoever has most recently gotten in Reed and Leigh’s way. If you’re squeamish about dead bodies and body parts, this may not be the book for you.
The most notable thing about Middlegame that makes it stand out from McGuire’s other works is its bold, experimental style. The story starts at the end, with the opening chapter labeled “Timeline: Five minutes too late, thirty seconds from the end of the world.” Multiple times throughout the story, we see Roger and Dodger almost fail in their quest and end up lying in a pool of blood, about to die. Luckily, Dodger’s mathematical abilities extend beyond mere genius to the point that she can reset time, and they keep trying again until they can finally get things right. The plot progresses in a non-linear fashion with frequent leaps forward and the occasional leap back, as well as geographical leaps across the country as we follow Roger, Dodger, or the alchemists who created them. Added to this jumbled mix are pages from an invented text called Over the Woodward Wall—a children’s book in which the alchemist Asphodel Baker encodes her plans in allegory. Though these complex story-telling methods initially dump on you a lot more questions than answers, everything eventually comes together in a satisfying way.
If you like your fantasy with an almost sci-fi feel, strange yet thoroughly developed characters, and a side of bloody murder, definitely check out Middlegame! You can find Middlegame on shelves at your local retailer starting tomorrow. You can also buy it online and support The Gothic Library in the process by clicking on this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Once you’ve read it, be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments!