Library Read // Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

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.

Seanan McGuire's Middlegame is a book I borrowed because it stuck out while I scoured my GoodReads want-to-read list, then looking for a book to promptly borrow from the library. Once I did start reading it, I was sold. Without realizing it was its sequel in the Alchemical Journeys series, I borrowed Seasonal Fears during my following library visit because I was sold on the author's writing. 

I read Middlegame under the impression that the author was male, being corrected of that assumption as I read the acknowledgements and back page of the book sleeve, so some things that rubbed me the wrong way, some of the things Roger spoke that felt sexist as I read them, suddenly don't carry the same offense import. Maybe they should, maybe that was a point being made about the character, but in those quirks at least I no longer find offense. 

What I will say is, though I relatively sped through the book, once the protagonists accepted their magical nature, the esoteric concepts, the mechanisms and thought processes of the magic and future reading, if you will, of the plot became a bit muddled. Ultimately, that confusion of conveyance didn't much impact my read. I was able to power through any hiccups without loosing much, if any, of the finer plot points. But I found it worth noting. 

In theory, I wavered, or am wavering, between giving this book 4.5 stars or 5 stars. Practically, it doesn't matter, I'm giving it 5 stars. I'm very excited to jump into the next book. And then after that I'm excited to return a bunch of books to the library.