A review by mfrank
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 I love Seanan McGuire and her writing so much! I was so happy to read this and it made me happy to go through it! I loved Roger and Dodger so much. They felt very real to me. I think Seanan McGuire is so great at creating characters. For me, the only reason that this was four stars instead of five stars is the climax scenes. I think Seanan McGuire is great at creating characters and building narrative tension, but I've noticed in a few of her books that I've read that the climax sometimes fails to deliver on that tension.
I really hated the fake-out climax. It felt like we gained nothing from that. They would have manifested without that. And the fact that we thought both Leigh and Erin died and then neither of them died made me so upset. Like, what was the point of that scene if it accomplished literally nothing for them. Also, the face that Erin then actually died made me so upset. It felt a bit weird too. Like, that Erin was just too broken to survive without her brother? It felt off to the message about sibling love. Especially, that Erin basically chose to kill herself, sort of? I know she didn't literally, but it felt at the end like she was making the choice to die rather than that Reed actually killed her. Just those last like 30 pages felt weird overall.
Despite those few issues I had with the book, I loved the overall story enough to sort of make up for those moments where I didn't. 
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