63rd book of 2019.
I judged this book by its cover. With Middlegame as the title and birthday-cake hand on the cover, I assumed this novel was about modern divorce in the mid-west or something equally boring.
But after reading Raven’s Tower, I was ready for more fantasy, and the AI gods of book recommendation algorithms (combined with a 4+ rating on goodreads) brought me here. None to soon, I got a cold last week, and read through in a few groggy days.
The plot centers around a world-weary math-genius and a more affable but still awkward language genius, who share a Kylo-Rey style force connection by which they can talk to one another simply by closing their eyes.
Eyes closed, imagining through the colorblind lens of our protagonist, I adored our main characters, and the relationship they shared, moreso than anything since the Golden Compass. Perhaps I grew up close enough to being a child genius, the entire plot of them growing up in normal-if-menacing circumstances resonated to the point that I found myself vividly remembering the janitor’s closet in my own elementary school, and how much I would have wished for a connection like what these two shared.
Every connection, every missed glance was one that brought me back to other points in my life and I felt like I was standing there waiting for the next detail to unfold. In comparison, our antagonists felt like cardboard cutouts, and nearly made me want to put down the book. The plot wasn’t exactly straightforward, but the occasional ctrl-z seemed to make enough sense that I never felt lost. By the time we got to the end, I felt like we were going through the perfunctory motions of what an action sequence would demand.