Literature / Middlegame

Middlegame is a 2020 fantasy novel by Seanan McGuire.

Roger and Dodger are just two kids, located hundreds of miles away from each other. Except that they're supernaturally gifted, one with words and one with numbers. And they share a psychic connection. And they are homunculoid creations of alchemy that embody the Doctrine of Ethos and may have Reality Warper powers. After losing contact with each other for several years, they're forced to turn back to their connection as adults, which their creator comes back to regain the power he's been growing within them. It just might end this world, whether or not he ever finds them.

First in the Alchemical Journeys series. The non-narrative sequel Seasonal Fears was published in 2022.

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Middlegame contains examples of:

• Alchemy Is Magic: A foundational trope to the setting. Such things as Golems, Philosophers Stones and homunculi show up but that's just the tip of the iceberg for the setting. As with much alchemy depicted in fiction, it is about the purification of substances both material and immaterial. Disturbingly some of the best work requires Human Resources, especially for the Big Bad's plans. Interestingly it isn't the only magical system around.
• Artificial Human: Most of the characters are this to some extent either being purpose-built successors to their respective creators or Custom-Built Host for primal forces of the universe. Discussed as they don't feel that different from "normal people" and have empathy and real connections with them but their differences are real and acknowledged at least by the heroes.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: L. Frank Baum was an alchemist and rival to Asphodel Deborah Baker who wrote his Oz books to drown out her Up-and-Under series. Other personages mentioned - by surname - are Mark Twain, H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.
• Big Bad: Reed is this for the novel and a traditional one at that, all the organizations that seem like they're set up to be worse just fold and combust when they stand in his way.
• Chess Motifs: Downplayed compared to other themes, but Dodger is a master chess player if only accidently and the whole book is a macro-scale chess game between Reed and his creations, various people being called kings and queens and pawns.
• Compelling Voice: A command of language makes this an easy trick for Roger.
  "When he gives an order I don't want to follow, it's like spiders in my brain, and I can't say no. No matter how much I want to not do it, I have to, because he told me to, and it's like spiders running their spider legs all over the inside of my brain. [...] You made him use me like a puppet."
• Colorblind Confusion: Roger has this, as he's able to see through Dodger's eyes he always thought that things were just more colorful in California. When they start to reach their apotheosis the problem goes away.
• Cunning Linguist: As an embodiment of the Word, Roger picks up languages easily, and is the group's main strategist too.
• Custom-Built Host: The container children combine this with Anthropomorphic Personification. They are embodiments of primordial forces of the universe but they are not the forces themselves, only the most perfect containers for them, with the added caveat that they can express their power instead of just staring at a wall for their whole lives. This is in fact what the original embodiment of the Ethos did and Dodger and Roger were just one set of three pairs that had the chance to embody the Ethos, their erstwhile successors are dangerous precisely because they have the chance to be even better containers and leach the Ethos from them.
• Disability-Negating Superpower: Dodger has terrible spatial reasoning, but being Good with Numbers means she can measure out the distances and adapt from there. It lets her bike around campus easily and sink shots to her office bin without looking.
• Disposable Woman: The birth mothers for the various children are just convenient incubators for them and are killed when Reed had the kids, and because he isn't wasteful he'll recycle them for parts when needed.
• Double-Meaning Title: Middlegame is part of the larger a Chess Motifs of the novel, the twins need to play their cards just right to get to the end and they're continually backtracking. Just as one considers all your moves in the middle part of a chess game before the endgame.
• Equivalent Exchange: Haruspicy only provides genuine prophetic results if the entrails come from something the augur truly cares about. Reed wants to be very certain about his information, so he sacrifices one of his own Artificial Human "children". Interestingly it's a magic system not tied to Alchemy.
• Face Death with Dignity: Smita takes every possible option to save her own life but when given a choice between her own and innocent bystanders she decides to go without fuss.
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: Pythagoras, Paracelsus and Baker. The last refined alchemy through science, able to create the philosphers stone, the panacea and alkahest.
• Fictional Document: Over the Woodward Wall was written in-universe as a means for Asphodel Baker (as A. Deborah Baker) to distribute her ideas to the general public. To change the collective unconsciousness, McGuire later published that book in 2020, a year after Middlegame under that exact title.
• Friendless Background: Roger and Dodger are twin geniuses who both have no friends in their childhood, focusing on their academic interests instead. However, Roger starts making friends in high school while Dodger doesn't, and her growing loneliness ultimately contributes to a suicide attempt.
• Glorified Sperm Donor: Reed contributed his constructed genetics to the Dodger and Roger's conception. He reveals this to try and get an emotional hold over Dodger in the finale but she plays this trope straight and rejects him.
• Godhood Seeker: Reed's century-long bid for divinity is to embody the Doctrine of Ethos, a universal force that can control reality through mathematics and language, in Artificial Human twins, then subjugate them to his will before their powers fully manifest.
• Golem: Not used by any of the premier alchemists but one of Leigh's assistants definitely uses one. Literally Made of Iron Leigh considers it acceptable.
• Hand of Glory: Hands of Glory are a recurring motif, used both by the villains and one Anti-Hero to veil their actions. They need to be made from the victims of deliberate, premeditated murder — the gorier the better — and generate a Perception Filter around the wielder and the people they're engaged with that negates even powerful Tracking Spells. Another piece of fantasy not linked to Alchemy Is Magic.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: The final sections call for this strategy when you don't have any alchemical resources.
  "It keeps people from looking at us too hard. No one with anything to lose would be sitting in Denny's after midnight, eating pancakes."
• Human Resources: A major part of only non-alchemy magic seen. Quite a few people end up on the butcher's block, not only the twins' friend Smita, but also Dodger's parents and numerous innocents who just happen to be in Leigh's way. Quite a few get turned into a Hand of Glory.
• Hollywood Acid: The alchemical "universal solvent" alkahest quickly dissolves effectively anything it touches, other than a specially prepared receptacle, including even abstract concepts. It almost instantly melts Leigh, Super-Toughness notwithstanding. It's also an important medical tool for creating Artificial Humans like Leigh and Reed.
• Honest John's Dealership: Reed has a certain style he affects when selling his inventions to his investors which he assumes and drops easily.
• Human Traffickers: Part of what Leigh Barrow brings to what she sees as her partnership with Reed. Since the pair don't have a Uterine Replicator lying around they need to go the traditional route.
• Humans Are White: Exploited by James Reed, who makes his artificial "children" white to match most of his investors, so that they will feel more connected to the children and give him more money.
• Immortality: Asphodel Baker created and proliferated the elixir of life, the holy grail of alchemy but that was just an opening act for her. There are quite a few in the Alchemical Congress that are alive because of her but that pack of misogynists still tried to stop her.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Dodger ends up on the bad end of this trope since she lacks Roger's social skills.
• Interrupted Suicide: Dodger put a lot of thought into her suicide attempt but Roger was able to intuit where she was and get her help in time.
• Lethal Harmless Powers: Dodger would be stronger than Roger, but her flashier powers don't work without him to trigger them—alone, she's mainly really, really good at math, and can sight-calculate all trajectories and dimensions instantly.The villains assume she will be easy to take out. The villains are wrong. Having the dimensions of her home memorized means she can move twice as fast as the would-be assassin, and she can't miss when she throws things at him, which combined with Dodger braining the jerk with a toaster ends with him tied to a chair, all before the cavalry arrives.
• Mistaken for Romance: Since most people don't know that Roger and Dodger are actually siblings (or that Dodger is completely uninterested in dating, to begin with), the first assumption is often that such a strong connection between a boy and a girl must be romantic. Having to debunk this skeeves both of them out to no end.
• Money Is Not Power: Reed only deals with corporate investors because they provide easy access to resources for his projects. Once he doesn't need them anymore he lets Leigh off the leash and lets her kill them and their families.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Both Leigh Barrow and James Reed identify themselves as doctors. They may well have such doctorates in truth if not in fact, given the amount of expertise alchemy historically needed.
• Necessary Fail: Roger and Dodger can rewind time but don't have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory. At the finale, they learn just how many times they reset their lives and realize that all the tragedies they endured, including accidentally causing an earthquake that killed thousands, were still the best-case scenario.
• The Needs of the Many: Important part of the climax, Roger realizes to his horror that although he and Dodger can change the timeline, there are some awful things they must leave intact in order to have any chance of preventing the Big Bad from remaking the world in his image. This includes tragedies from the death of Darren, their strongest ally Erin's brother (if the bad guys hadn’t callously used him as cannon fodder, she would’ve never had her Heel–Face Turn; she knows he has to stay dead for the greater good and is incredibly bitter about it), to an earthquake that kills thousands.
• Neurodiversity Is Supernatural: Quite a few of the container children fit this trope. One for example can speak in chemical code that equates to game-changing pharmaceuticals. In fact, the previous version of the Doctrine of Ethos was essentially a low-functioning autistic. Dodger has a host of issues interacting with others and severe trouble sleeping. Roger is able to mask much more effectively but even he has issues like his hearing difficulties. Thus they are equivalent to high-functioning autistics.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: What the twins turn out to be for each other when they meet in their teens before they worried that they were going insane.
• Order Versus Chaos: Defied and played straight, Erin and Darren both embody opposing forces but they have a deep love for each other. But because they embody opposing forces they're able to exist without each other, which is why Reed is able to risk Darren's life when it's useful to him without killing Erin in turn.
• Our Homunculi Are Different: An important part of the plot. Asphodel Baker created Reed as an adult with alchemy, and Leigh was almost certainly created in a similar way. Their successive creations, however, are closer to Artificial Humans as even if their DNA is slightly different they still were born and had childhoods.
• Panacea: One of the trifecta of alchemy's magnum opus. Asphodel figured out how to make it far more efficiently and it makes a near-flawless longevity treatment.
• Paradox Person: Dodger turns herself into this to spend nearly a decade away from Roger in safety. She calls a version of herself in the future which substantiates her in that future; safe, healthy and free of Reed's influence, it also kept Leigh from being able to find her.
• Perception Filter: The Hand of Glory makes a localized alternate reality that keeps people outside of the effect from noticing. Further fires lighted by the candles of a Hand go unnoticed too.
• Philosopher's Stone: Asphodel would have secured her place in the Alchemical Congress were she a man given her easy method of Stone production. Alas, she had a vagina so it was not to be.
• A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: By design, Baker made James Reed to accomplish her goals, including betraying and killing her. In part to make sure she didn't have to bloody her own hands. He is far more ruthless than she was.
• Prescience by Analysis: Part of Dodger being good with numbers, she is able to weld game theory onto behavioral analysis to predict the villains' actions. It also lets her cover for her spatial issues.
• Reality Warper: The embodied Doctrine of Ethos is supposed to have functionally limitless command over reality. An early misfire causes a devastating earthquake, and Roger and Dodger have the power to rewind time for most of their lives.
  His words are put before the universe, and after a moment, the universe agrees with him.
• Renaissance Woman: Asphodel D. Baker, Author Alchemist Scientist the woman could do it all. She reached the pinnacle of Alchemy early in her career and she just kept going.
• Reset-Button Suicide Mission: What many timelines arguably become as they need to get specific information and get Erin to pass on the information to the twins.
• Revenge: The entire plot only happened because back in the original timeline Erin found Dodger (who'd been comatose since age five) and got her to reset the timeline, just to give Erin the chance to kill Reed and Leigh.
• Rhyming Names: All of the project children have this to some extent it is apparently part of what makes the alchemy magic work.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Erin, as the embodiment of Order, can detect all changes made by Dodger's uncountable presses of the Reset Button. It's not perfect but she is able to remember important information.
• Sacrificial Lion: Smita is a real friend to the twins and an excellent scientist which gets her targeted for death. Her drive and links to the wider academic community would have led to Reed's century-long plan being discovered once the anomalies in Dodger and Roger's Autosomal DNA were investigated.
• Shining City: The Impossible City is this in the book, though it gets little description beyond things like diamond towers, every character is involved in some way. The cuckoo twins can visit it while Reed and Leah want to reach it for themselves. The narration describes it as only the latest unreachable peak; others include things like Olympus or Albion.
• Shout-Out: References to other works are well-woven into the narrative.
  • The chapters have multiple quotes at the start of them. When thinking on the misstep of Leigh's creator Reed references Blodeuedd and Frankenstein when creating life you can't make something more ambitious than you are.
  • Jurassic Park' Ian Malcom is a role model for Dodger and the only man real or fictional that catches her interest.
  • To The Science of Discworld which popularized the idea of the storytelling ape around the campfire.
• Smart People Play Chess: Dodger is a genius who both publishes prizewinning mathematical proofs and does a tour as a competitive chess champion before her teens. She eventually quits the circuit because the other chess players devote their lives to studying the game, whereas she, as a human embodiment of the universal force of mathematics, can beat them all by pure intuition.
• Synchronization: What Dodger and Roger have due to sharing the Doctrine of Ethos. Dodger's suicide attempt almost costs Roger his life. Not all project twins have this though, Erin is able to exist without Darren even if she doesn't want to.
• Teacher/Student Romance: James was Baker's unkillable apprentice and a perfect lover. Worse than usual because Baker made James as an adult so she's also his mother.
• Thanatos Gambit: Asphodel Baker's was making James Reed. She knew he'd betray her but she wanted an ambitious student that would carry out her plans without being hindered by her morals or the sexism she had to deal with all her life. She got everything she asked for.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: A wonderfully confused mess of one too! Each press of the Reset Button is a full universal reset but some people like Erin are still able to tell that a change occurred, so her ability to partially retain information is crucial. Dodger and Roger have next to no memories however which might be for the best, given that they've been resetting timelines for something like three million years.
• Twin Telepathy: Dodger and Roger entangle much earlier than Reed planned. They can share attributes between them and is essential for them to be able to express the Ethos. It's also great for getting help with homework.
• Wham Line: When Roger asks how many times the universe has been reset, Dodger starts to say a low number, and he expresses how relieved he is. Except she wasn't finished—it's not "lucky number thirteen", but "lucky number thirteen thousand".
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: For alchemy reasons, the incarnations' names have to rhyme. Sometimes you get Kim and Tim. Sometimes you get Roger and Dodger. Actually enforced in Dodger's case; there's a clause in her adoption paperwork that prevented her parents from changing her name, though she's used to it by the time people work out that the clause is unenforceable.

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