Middlegame by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com, 2019)
★★★★☆
Twin siblings, raised to be the two halves of an alchemical power that can reshape time and space, find and lose and find each other across timelines.
I’m so relieved to say I loved this, since it’s my first Seanan McGuire, and she’s another beloved figure at The Bookstore. When Tor.com did a recent promo for the ebook, I snapped it up, but my dear friend L.’s four-star rating was what pushed it to the front of my TBR.
L. and I freaking out about Middlegame over text.
I most appreciated what a structural coup this book is. In a story about multiple timelines, the first scene we’re shown is the blood-drenched “End.” How did we get to this point—and how will we leave it? Those burning questions drive us through the next few chapters and the early years of Roger and Dodger’s relationship as they discover their “quantum entanglement.” Epigraphs from Over the Woodward Wall, a fictional book-within-a-book (that McGuire will be turning into a real book), bookend these discoveries, hinting at the path the twins must follow to achieve the fabled Impossible City.
But if Roger and Dodger come together too early, they’ll ruin the experiment—and so the alchemists who created them intervene to make sure they keep their social distance. The thorough characterization of the twins and the entirely believable ways they love-but-deny each other were wonderful, and the novel’s beating heart. And, like L. said, the atmosphere and tension throughout were top-notch.
I was less enthused about the back half of the book, which is a little infodump-y, and hinges on defining the nuts and bolts of the Impossible City, which I found less compelling than the idea of it. The final confrontation felt anticlimactic, and, in contrast to the serious topics explored elsewhere (including attempted suicide), even cartoonish. I wished for more complexity from the two antagonists, given the early tension in their relationship, and especially from the power-hungry Big Bad.
Overall, though, it’s hard for a book to get me to care this much, so it still gets a solid four stars.