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3.0 

The Middling Affliction: The Conradverse Chronicles, Book 1

By Alex Shvartsman
The Middling Affliction: The Conradverse Chronicles, Book 1 by Alex Shvartsman digital book - Fable

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Publisher Description

GUARD BROOKLYN, FIGHT MONSTERS, TAUNT BAD GUYS

 

"With the fast-paced first Conradverse urban fantasy, Shvartsman (Eridani's Crown) delivers a laugh-out-loud, snarky adventure, throwing out pop culture references and wry observations with dizzying frequency....His supernatural New York City is vibrant and authentic, and Conrad fits right in with wisecracking fan favorite heroes like Harry Dresden and Simon Canderous. The result is a thoroughly satisfying romp."—Publishers Weekly

What would you do if you lost everything that mattered to you, as well as all means to protect yourself and others, but still had to save the day? Conrad Brent is about to find out.

 

Conrad Brent protects the people of Brooklyn from monsters and magical threats. The snarky, wisecracking guardian also has a dangerous secret: he's one in a million – literally.

 

Magical ability comes to about one in every 30,000 and can manifest at any age. Conrad is rarer than this, however. He's a middling, one of the half-gifted and totally despised. Most of the gifted community feels that middlings should be instantly killed. The few who don't flat out hate them still aren't excited to be around middlings. Meaning Conrad can't tell anyone, not even his best friends, what he really is.

 

Conrad hides in plain sight by being a part of the volunteer Watch, those magically gifted who protect their cities from dangerous, arcane threats. And, to pay the bills, Conrad moonlights as a private detective and monster hunter for the gifted community. Which helps him keep up his personal fiction – that he's a magical version of Batman. Conrad does both jobs thanks to charms, artifacts, and his wits, along with copious amounts of coffee. But little does he know that events are about to change his life…forever.

 

When Conrad discovers the Traveling Fair auction house has another middling who's just manifested her so-called powers on the auction block, he's determined to save her, regardless of risk. But what he finds out while doing so is even worse – the winning bidder works for a company that's just created the most dangerous chemical weapon to ever hit the magical community.

 

Before Conrad can convince anyone at the Watch of the danger, he's exposed for what he really is. Now, stripped of rank, magical objects, friends and allies, Conrad has to try to save the world with only his wits. Thankfully though, no one's taken away his coffee.

 

"Shvartsman delivers real magic action and surprise twists...You're going to want more."—Esther M. Fiesner, Nebula-award winning author of the national bestseller, Warchild.

6 Reviews

3.0
“I quite liked ‘The Middling Affliction’. It has a touch of old film noir elan and dash. Our hero, Conrad Brent is a smart alec and not very closeted do-gooder. As a member of the magical Watch, it’s his job to oversee his assigned borough of New York, Brooklyn, and keep it free of dark magic users and ill-tempered magical creatures. All in a days work for a wizard of the Watch. But here’s the caveat, Conrad’s not actually a wizard . . . he’s a middling. A human that can see magical auras and use magical artifacts but has no magic of his own. And middlings are verboten in this world. ( This part I didn't really understand the ‘why’ of ) but whatever. Being a middling is a very bad thing to be, and Conrad’s fixing to be in a whole world of hurt. The story moves quickly and concepts are explained thoroughly and concisely pertinent to the story. It’s obviously being set up as the intro to a series and I look forward to reading more of the stories of the Watch. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.”
“Actual rating: 2.5 I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This started out as an interesting urban fantasy with the potential for comicbook quality in terms of an interesting premise for a superhero story and the flashiness and action that comes with it. Unfortunately, while the story is quite action-packed and spectacular in its displays of magic, there never seemed to be a real hook to the story both in terms of plot and characters. The characters are very one-dimensional and emotionless, and the plot, while having a general direction, was unevenly paced with some portions feeling more like afterthoughts than intentional parts of the story. Since this is set in modern times, there are a lot of pop culture references which didn't quite land for me and sometimes felt a bit cringey. I thought this was conceptually strong and could have done great as a graphic novel, video game, or even animated series, especially given the very episodic structure of the story, but this book overall fell flat for me. It kept me mildly entertained all throughout, but never invested enough to find out what happens next. I still think it has a fantastic cover though.”
“Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an e-arc for this book. I went into reading The Middling Affliction expecting a fun urban fantasy story, and in some aspects my expectations were met. The world building in particular was interesting and the plot had interesting concepts that were often well executed on a scene to scene basis. However as a whole novel this potential seemed wasted. Initially I loved Conrad’s character, and he was primed to be a favourite of mine (considering the characters I usually enjoy) however as the story progressed, and particularly in the second half, he lacked much development; with the plot demanding rapid jumps between scenes and locations. Willodean was a character I really enjoyed however her arc felt particularly rushed and almost purposeless by then end. Besides these main two, many other characters provided fun interactions but on the whole had little depth. I feel these issues can largely be attributed to the poor pacing of the novel. The pace is frantic, and messy. Huge plot reveals and information which appeared to be setting up plot lines were solved within the timeframe of a chapter. The second half of the book particularly provides an information overload in which there was no time to process the significant things happening in the book before the next plot point is introduced and dealt with in similar fashion. Additionally I found issue with a lot of the humour and the overall tone of the book. I feel as though I understand what tone the author was trying to achieve with the large focus on comedy in this story, however the jokes rarely landed for me. Going beyond simply not being funny to me, as at some points I felt uncomfortable rather than amused, and personally found a lot of the humour here to be out of touch. Making it abundantly clear that I most likely wasn’t the target demographic for this book. Overall The Middling Affliction is a fun story with some extremely cool concepts and ideas and a world I would love to see explored more thoroughly. It had a strong start with its main character Conrad being great to begin with, however for me, the story fell apart as the poor pacing rushed past many points for development and depth, and favouring humour that had me pushing myself through sections of the story, craving the great character moments and plot points that unfortunately couldn’t outweigh the negative aspects for me.”
“Thank you to CAEZIK SF & Fantasy and Netgalley for a review eARC Now this book was truly not what i expected going in. I vaguely remember the summary from when i got the copy a few months ago and I went in thinking this was just vigilantes in NYC with magic. What I got wrong was that this was much much much more. This is an Urban Fantasy that takes place in NYC, about magic beings protecting humans or mundanes as they are called in the novel, from magic, and being meaning them harm. It follows one man in particular that is head of the Watch in the borough of Brooklyn. He is not like most magical beings, as he is a Middling, a magic user who has no magic of their own but can see magic around them and use magical objects. His kind are usually hunted and killed. When he get word that another being like him is up for auction at a fair, he rushes to save her and sets off a cascade of events that threaten the entire magical community of NYC. The characters of this novel and their relationship were the highlight. This novel was also fun and adventurous, and never took itself too seriously. I only wish the stakes were a little higher and the magic and how it works was more prevalent.”

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