Middlegame
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4.3 • 207 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A HUGO AWARD FINALIST!
WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST FANTASY NOVEL, 2020!
A Pick on the 2020 RUSA Reading List!
New York Times bestselling and Alex, Nebula, and Hugo-Award-winning author Seanan McGuire introduces readers to a world of amoral alchemy, shadowy organizations, and impossible cities in the standalone fantasy, Middlegame.
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.
A USA Today Bestseller, and named as one of Paste Magazine's 30 Best Fantasy Novels of the Decade!
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
There’s more than an echo of Mary Shelley’s horror in this dark fairy tale from Seanan McGuire. Roger and Dodger are twins who were bred in a laboratory and separated at birth, and are now the human embodiment of “the living force that holds the universe together.” United, the siblings’ power is incredible, but their creator intends to destroy them if he can’t control them. Written with immaculate and starkly beautiful prose, Middlegame is a work of brilliant complexity, equal parts science fiction and fantasy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McGuire (the Wayward Children series) puts a genuinely innovative spin on the magical child horror novel in this mesmerizing story of two gifted, telepathic children and the unsettling source of their powers. Massachusetts seven-year-old Roger Middleton is struggling with his multiplication worksheet when a girl's voice pops into his head and gives him the answers. Dodger Cheswich, his mental correspondent, lives in California, and Roger is soon able to reciprocate her assistance when she shares that her academic struggles are with reading and spelling. Roger has an intuitive connection with words that's as strong as Dodger's with numbers. As their relationship develops, the two remain unaware that they are pawns in a larger game initiated by James Reed, the son of Victorian alchemist Asphodel Baker; Reed and Baker aspire to create human incarnations of Pythagoras's Doctrine of Ethos, which concerns humanity's ability to command nature. As Roger and Dodger grow up and explore their more terrifying abilities, their investigation into their origins puts them in danger. Heightening the tension is a prologue set "five minutes too late" and "thirty seconds from the end of the world," in which Dodger is bleeding to death as Roger takes desperate measures to save her. Shifts and alterations in timelines demand close attention from readers, but McGuire's rigorous plotting pulls everything together by the end. This is a fascinating novel by an author of consummate skill.
Customer Reviews
Middlegame
An unusual book that illustrated emotions and had vivid scenes. Throughout the book I was on my heels reading a thriller. It was not a difficult book to read. The ending was the culmination of a exciting book. Good book.
First book I’ve thoroughly loved in a long time
I was sick of reading the same old thing and found this. It kept me interested from start to finish, and the themes may be sometimes difficult to comprehend but it’s okay if you don’t, you still get it and can stick with the story line. My life is trash and I felt so much better about it when I finished this book - we all make choices, sometimes we can see to consequences and have to do it anyway, sometimes we don’t, but they all get us to where we need to be.
Wow
This book is brilliant! Is it flawed? Maybe? I don’t know, because it’s a wild and convoluted story that is sometimes difficult to track. And yet I was incessantly drawn back to it. Not everyone is going to love it, but others will see the genius here. Bravo.