Review: Middlegame

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this book as part of voting for the Hugo Awards this year. Middlegame was at the top of my ballot. A 5-star review reflects my experience with this book.

A set of twins, brother and sister named Roger and Dodger, are bred to achieve ultimate power over reality. The man, James Reed, that bred them maintains a laboratory of Lovecraftian work where researchers continue lesser experiments. Reed is himself the product of a dark experiment by another scientist, Asphodel Baker, whose work was rejected by the academy for the crime of it having been created by a woman. Roger and Dodger were bred to be tools for someone else. Can they break free of that control and work on their own behalf?

There are lots of delicious layers to this book. There are some passages dealing with sexism in science. There are also some themes involving long term planning. Reed was created by Asphodel to execute her research on the world. The creation of Reed involves the death of Asphodel. Before her death, Asphodel seeds the global human consciousness with fictional literature that illustrates the theories of her scientific research. Which characters are playing the longest game of all?

Themes involving individuals complementing one another are present as well. Rodger and Dodger have different perspectives on the world; he lives in words while she lives in numbers and equations. Only together do they possess the potential to control the definitions of reality.

This book is a literary rollercoaster ride. Lots of ups and downs. There are many sections where there is a graceful pause just before the bottom drops out and you fall in terror. It skips back and forth between fantasy and horror with the lightness of a ballerina.

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My reviews of all of the 2020 Hugo finalists for best novel are here.