Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

I'm writing this review on 7/2/20. I finished reading Middlegame on May 31, 2020. This is relevant with regard to a fairy tale I will mention later.

I picked up this ebook & audiobook after reading an article on the 2020 Hugo award nominee finalists. Middlegame was among them and there-after I read a great deal of praise for Seanan McGuire.

I'd never heard of Seanan McGuire before that article. I read Middlegame. Now I own several Seanan McGuire books & audiobooks.


Lately, when reading, I tend to think, "This reminds me of…"

The Left Hand of Darkness

By Ursula K. Le Guine

Read in 3 session on June 20, 25, & 27, 2020. Recommended.  4.5 stars rounded down.

Charlie Jane Anders’ Afterword comments on the Left Hand of Darkness immediately brings to my mind, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift.

The one thing I remember so vividly about Gulliver’s Travels is that in addition to it being a travelogue, it was even more a handbook on Governments and political etiquette. 

In so many ways, The Left Hand of Darkness is Gulliver’s Travels... aka "Genly’s Travels."

I think many folks were moved by Le Guin’s “Abisexual” alien humans.  It might have impacted me more had I not been so impacted by Octavia Butler’s “Dawn” decades ago.  That book literally haunted me for decades.  Still does. 

An Invisible Client by Victor Methos

My rating:

Amazon rejected this review as violation of community standards. (Ask them, I'm baffled)

This is a legal suspense drama, a legal thriller with a plot similar to the Erin Brockovich movie. This book does a number of nice things I can tell you about without spoiling a thing.

I particularly liked the frank discussion of law from Mr. Victor Methos. A real life attorney with plenty of experience.

Early in the book Mr. Methos boldly tells the reader some painful truth about our legal system.  It's about the money.  It's almost as refined as insurance actuary tables.

Juries of peers, blind justice, everyone equal…, these are all myths that may have held actual meaning in early USA history -- but today justice is a performance being "play-acted" as if it is run any different from the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship. Maybe Amazon didn't like Mr. Metho's implied clarity about this point?

Mind's Eye by Douglas E. Richards

My rating:

Mind's Eye is the first book in Douglas E. Richards's Nick Hall Series. There are 3 books in the series.

If you asked me about any Douglas E. Richard's book, I would likely just say, "Read it." And that would be a good recommendation two out of three times. He's a superb writer, researches his fantastic/speculative fiction quite well and extrapolates with some exciting ideas.

I think the Nick Hall series is another of this great jobs at speculations and research. He does his normal workmanship like writing that seems suited for an action screenplay most the time. If you asked me on April 19, 2020, if you should read the Nick Hall series, having almost finished Brain Web by that time, it would be an instant yes.

The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett

The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett is a 5 star fantasy novel about people who live during the day and hide by night when demons rise from the core of the Earth.  The back story as to how such a world came to be is barely relevant, so rarely discussed.  The world building is exquisite primarily because the entire “Demon Cycle” series of novels is character based.  This means the world is built by character actions and reactions to the world rather than any imaginative narrative.

The Daylight War is the third book in the “Demon Cycle” series.  So the least and most I can say that isn’t instantly “spoiler” material is that all the primary characters continue to grow into more fantastic characters.

When I first read the book, there was no 4th book in the series.

No one who was following the series back when it was first published will ever forget the conclusion of The Daylight War.

The wait for the next book was barely less painful than standing at the end of a very long line knowing your bladder has already exceeded its capacity.

2019 Conclusion

I failed to write several reviews towards the end of 2019.  I get that way sometimes.

If I did not publish them here I may have published something on View all my Goodread's reviews, or The Library Thing. Sometimes I do that. There is another "sagelyfox" on Wordpress, although less well maintained.

Here are the books I believe I failed to review here:

• Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga, #4) by Brown, Pierce * 
• Code Breakers: Prequel by Barnes, Colin F. *
• Code Breakers: Delta (Code Breakers #4) by Barnes, Colin F. *
• Morning Star (Red Rising Saga, #3) by Brown, Pierce *
• Gamma (Code Breakers #3) by Barnes, Colin F. *
• Beta (Code Breakers #2) by Barnes, Colin F. *
• Alpha (Code Breakers #1) by Barnes, Colin F. *
• The Warrior Queen (The Hundredth Queen, #4) by King, Emily R *
• The Rogue Queen (The Hundredth Queen, #3) by King, Emily R *
• The Fire Queen (The Hundredth Queen, #2) by King, Emily R *

The Painted Man by Peter V. Brett

Penguin Random House:

For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards—symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile.

The Painted Man (Demon Cycle 1) by Peter V. Brett

Narrator(s):
👍🏻The Warded Man by Pete Bradbury,
👏🏻 The Painted Man Colin Mace

My Rating:

Easily a 5-star book. It’s a character driven fantasy. It’s a story of a boy (Arlen) growing up hard in a world where demons rule the night while humans huddle in fear behind magic barriers called wards that they barely understand.

Events mold young Arlen into the man he becomes. It’s much like a coming of age story as well as a hero’s journey.

Book has everything a fiction lover could want. Mystery, the fantastic, love, unrequited love, suspense, thrills, and of course tragedy that we’d much rather endure in fiction than in real life.

There are multiple protagonists (Leesha, Rojer), and the book follows each of them. At first the demons of the night are clearly the antagonists but where there are humans with different beliefs and values conflict hangs in the air like a thick fog.

From a very young Arlen who acquires a 15 foot tall rock demon “one arm” nemesis, who appears to hate Arlen in particular, we are propelled through the drama of human affairs to heroic events causing a dying town to change their name in honor of the scared and sick humans standing in the night against the onslaught of armies of demons.

Dark Age (Red Rising 5) by Pierce Brown

(Red Rising 5) Dark Age by Pierce Brown

My Rating:

Highly recommended 5 star novel. This is book 5 in the Red Rising Saga, a science fiction saga of social class casts of many colors..., and war. The wars of piddling slaves rebelling against the titan giant leaders, or so it was in the first trilogy.

In my mind, Dark Age is book #2 of the second trilogy of the Red Rising series. Officially Red Rising #5. If you're a fan of Red Rising, you don't need my review. I strongly recommend it to any Science Fiction fans, particularly if you love epic space opera/sagas. In this second trilogy it seems to me that Pierce Brown has abandoned the black and white of the fight between good and evil and has ventured in to the muddy marbled gray and white of reality.

Generally: Since this is the second book into the second trilogy of a complex epic space saga series there is no simple or generally.