A review by rorikae
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Seanan McGuire does an incredible job of mixing the fantastical and the alchemical with real life settings in 'Middlegame.' One of my favorite genres is fantasy that takes the real world and makes it that much more fascinating or disturbing through the use of fantastical elements. Seanan McGuire does that to a near perfect degree in 'Middlegame.' I think it helps to go into this book without knowing too much about it but from a very basic point, this is a story about two people, Rodger and Dodger, who discover a connection between them and unravel what this connection means. It's a very dark book with bright spots of hope and it deserves to be discovered in the reading process. 
One of my favorite things about this novel is how Seanan McGuire uses a fictional text within the book to help illuminate and obscure what is really happening. She does this masterfully and I am excited that she had the opportunity to write and publish this book within a book as its own text so that we can read more about it and use it to better understand Middlegame. 
It's hard to describe this book without spoilers but I will say, if you are looking for something a little spooky that includes alchemy, coming of age stories, and books within books, Middlegame just might scratch your itch. 
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