THE MIDDLING AFFLICTION
Book One
of The Conradverse Chronicles Series
AN
EXPERIMENT IN POP CULTURE CRITICALLYACCLAIMED AUTHOR,
ALEX
SHVARTSMAN
The novel will be available in eBook and print form
across all platforms!
GUARD BROOKLYN, FIGHT MONSTERS, TAUNT BAD GUYS
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.
Amazon.ca: The Middling Affliction: The Conradverse Chronicles, Book 1 eBook : Shvartsman, Alex: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store
PRAISE FOR THE MIDDLING AFFLICTON:
"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
"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.
ABOUT
ALEX:
Alex Shvartsman is the author of The Middling Affliction (2022)
and Eridani’s Crown (2019)
fantasy novels. Over 120 of his stories have appeared in Analog, Nature, Strange Horizons,
etc. He won the WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction (2014) and was a two-time
finalist (2015 & 2017) for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar
Fiction.
His translations from Russian have appeared in F&SF, Clarkesworld, Tor.com,
Asimov’s, etc. Alex has edited over a dozen anthologies, including
the long-running Unidentified Funny Objects series. He’s the editor-in-chief of
Future Science Fiction Digest.
Alex resides in Brooklyn, NY.
His website is http://www.alexshvartsman.com
To request additional review copies or an interview with Alex Shvartsman, please contact Mickey Mikkelson at Creative Edge Publicity by email: mickey.creativeedge@gmail.com or by phone at 403.464.6925.
We look forward to the coverage.
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