”Middlegame” by Seanan McGuire

This was a free ebook that I snagged off of Tor.com and I recognized the cover immediately and was thrilled to start reading it. The premise is that alchemists have been working on converting what is essentially the instructions and equations for the whole universe, the Doctrine of Ethos, into knowledge that a human can have. The way they do this is by splitting it into two parts: language and numbers. (Yes this is a bit of an oversimplification, but bear with me.) They then put those into a set of twins and have those raised in the world to see how they develop. If all goes well, then they will have a huge weapon at their disposal to make and remake the world as they see fit. Of course, the man developing these kids is Reed, a construct from the late alchemist Baker, and all he wants is power and he doesn’t care who he has to kill to make that happen.

The book follows the two kids destined to embody this Doctrine: Roger, who cannot get enough of words; and Dodger, a math genius. They find themselves able to talk to each other telepathically early on in their lives and help each other out. The story then follows as they meet each other, and fall apart from each other, continually trying to beat back Reed’s forces as they learn what they are. This involves time travel, as of course the equation behind the universe can reset time, and they keep trying to get it right. Part of the mystery is figuring out that this is what they are doing, almost subconsciously, altering time and going back again and again.

It is such a compelling story. Despite the fact that half of the characters aren’t really people, they’re constructed by alchemists, they are incredibly believable. To me half the fun was seeing how the idea of math would present itself in a person versus language. Dodger was always more aggressive and hot-headed with little regard for her future (and didn’t have very good depth perception) while Roger was more personable and quiet (and color-blind). They also compliment each other really well, you can tell in all of their interactions with each other and other people.

Throughout the story there’s references to Baker’s children’s books that are basically her ideas distilled down so that children can understand them. I feel like I’d have to reread them to get all of the parallels, but it ends up being essentially Roger and Dodger’s story laid out. The books are similar to The Wizard of Oz, which comes up as well, and it’s a nice reference to fiction we in this world would be familiar with.

The book is the ideal mix of confusing, since we are thrown into the world of alchemy, and familiar, with Roger and Dodger heading to grad school together and normal occurrences like that. It’s a great read that I want to revisit and see if I can pick up on more patterns.