Tuesday, June 18, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Middlegame by Seanan McGuire




Middlegame is the latest novel from prolific author, and personal favorite, Seanan McGuire.  I've loved McGuire's InCryptid and October Daye series and enjoyed some of her other work as well, so when she announced Middlegame as a book she's been working toward for quite some time, well, I was pretty excited.  Middlegame is, unlike those other books, not part of an existing series and functions entirely stand-alone novel.  It still contains some McGuire hallmarks - for example, she is fantastic at dialogue, even in a book which is less optimistic in tone, but the book's structure and characters are often very different from her prior works.

The result is...interesting.  It mostly works I think - and man did I have to think about this one - with two excellent main characters (and a couple of excellent side characters and potential villains) whose reactions to their unique circumstances, their inhuman abilities, all track in real and interesting - if something horrifying/traumatic - ways.  The non-linear plot works also rather well and kept the book interesting throughout, even when the reader knows more of what is going on than the characters.  Still, the book speeds up rapidly in its final act towards its ending and I don't think the payoff really quite met my expectations, which the book makes incredibly high.  I'll try to explain more after the jump.

Trigger Warning:  This book contains a major character making a suicide attempt, so if that or self-harm is a deal-breaker, this book may not be for you.

----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Following the map laid out by his mentor, the greatest alchemist of all time, a man named Reed has struggled to execute upon a great plan: to embody the powers of the Doctrine of Ethos - language and math - into this world, powers that could warp the world to his whim.  After years of failure, he finds proof of success in his latest test subjects: a series of twins: when a device seems to show that at least one of the pairs is affecting reality and time.  And so he sets his experiments, the children, into the world to see if how they will manifest.

As a seven year old, Roger has always struggled with math, despite being incredibly gifted with language.  But then one day he hears a voice in his head, the voice of a girl named Dodger, who seems his opposite: brilliant with math but not language.  Experimentation soon reveals that the two can see through each other's eyes, where the world looks very different.  But events conspire - or perhaps people conspire? - to drive the two apart.

But fate seems to keep bringing Roger and Dodger together as their lives continue, and the two discover there is more and more to their strange abilities than a mental link.  But sometimes it seems as if events are happening for not the first time, and as the two struggle to find a way to do things the right way, it seems that nearly every choice has always led down a wrong path....to devastating results.
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Middlegame is not told in a linear fashion, with the book beginning with "Book VII: The End" before jumping back to "Book 0: The Beginning."  It isn't simply starting in medias res, the book jumps back and forth through time, for reasons that actually have plot-relevance rather than simply being a narrative choice.  The result keeps the reader on edge, wondering what could possibly have occurred at varying points to result in different - or the same - future events, especially as more becomes clear in the present.

And the present story - or well the story as told somewhat in chronological order - works extremely well due to the great duo at the heart of the story, as well as some of the other minor characters.  Roger and Dodger may be empowered by their abilities of language and math respectively, but how they grow and develop, how they react to things, and who they are is really excellently done.  Roger, perhaps in part due to his skills with language, finds it easier to deal with people and make friends - at least externally - but is more scared of the possibilities of things he can do.  He's more able to persuade others, and himself, of things not being the way they are when he's afraid of them, and sometimes however as a result misinterprets what he thinks is happening as a result.

Dodger, due to her understanding of math and logic, is a lot less comfortable with other people and while she's not any less or more vulnerable than Roger, her inability to use language to deal with things can result in her taking more drastic - and tragic actions.  As the two of them repeatedly come into contact and others and fate conspire to tear them apart, the two express their vulnerabilities in different ways, often heartbreaking since we can see inside their own thoughts, which makes them extremely strong characters that are hard NOT to care for.  The fact that the reader knows more of what is going on than the characters only makes that feeling even stronger: sometimes seeing how the two are so vulnerable is really hard to read, but the result was that I needed to keep reading.

Still, while the characters are just so strong, and the dialogue and minor characters are often fantastic - hallmarks of a Seanan McGuire novel for those who are new to her - the non-linear plot sets up expectations that I just at the end didn't feel were met.  It takes 300 pages for the main characters to get at least partially up to speed on how things work and what's truly going on, and the final 150 pages move much much quicker than the prior 300, almost too quickly, with the final confrontation being incredibly abrupt.  And the revelations at the end were kind of underwhelming - with one expected revelation from the beginning never actually happening* - with it not being really clear (at least to me) how exactly things really came together.  The book sporadically includes excerpts from a fictional book that clearly reference the main duo throughout the book, but I didn't find them really adding to anything either.  It just feels like the payoff needed an extra 50 pages, and even then I'm not sure it really could've met the crazy high expectations the book set-up.  It's still a nice ending for the main duo, so it's not like it's bad in any way: I just was looking for much more.

*Spoilers in ROT13 for the Ending:    Gur obbx frgf hc onfvpnyyl va vgf cebybthr gung gur znfgrezvaq oruvaq gur jubyr cybg, gur yngr Nfcubqry Onxre, cynaarq ure bja qrngu ol ure perngvba Wnzrf Errq, naq gung Errq jbhyq ernyyl or ranpgvat ure jvyy guebhtubhg.  Errq frrzf gb fhttrfg ernyvmvat gung nf jryy.  Naq gura, va gur raq, Reva fhttrfgf gung Errq unf vafgrnq uvwnpxrq gur cyna sbe gur fnxr bs cbjre vafgrnq bs gur fnxr Nfcubqry vagraqrq (fbzrguvat zber nygehvfgvp naq tbbq sbe gur jbeyq?  Vg'f abg ernyyl pyrne), juvpu whfg xrcg zr jnvgvat gb frr n gjvfg jurer Nfcubqry'f jvyy vf ernyyl jung znavsrfgf....naq abguvat bs gung fbeg frrzf gb unccra?

Vg'f nyfb abg ernyyl pyrne jung gur "Vzcbffvoyr Pvgl" vf, be jul gur qhb unq gb tb onpx gb Errq nsgre znavsrfgvat va gur svany vgrengvba bs gur gvzr ybbc.  Naq ntnva, Errq'f gheavat gur gnoyrf ba gurz vzzrqvngryl va gung svany pbasebagngvba vf whfg fb penml noehcg gung vg whfg qbrfa'g jbex.

Nf V abgrq nobir, gur raqvat vf svar nf na raqvat sbe gur punenpgref: V ernyyl jnagrq Qbqtre naq Ebtre gb trg n unccl raqvat naq gurl xvaq bs qb, guebhtu vg nyy gurl ernyyl qb.  Ohg gur obbx frg-hc gurfr cybgf naq pbaprcgf gung whfg znqr zr jbaqre ernyyl jung gur raq bowrpgvir jnf, jung gur cybgf jrer sbe, guebhtubhg, naq vg arire cebivqrf gur nafjref, gb zl qvfnccbvagzrag.

In short, I enjoyed Middlegame, and I definitely recommend it, because it's an interesting book filled with ideas in addition to great characters.  I just didn't think the payoff for those ideas necessarily worked as well as I'd hoped.
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