Name: Ben's review of The Middling Affliction by Alex Shvartsman
Item: The Middling Affliction
Rating: 2
Author: Ben

Alex Shvartsman

The Dresden Files meets American Gods in New York City. 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.

The Conradverse Chronicles, Book 1

The Middling Affliction

Genesis (@whisperingchapters)

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.

Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &
The Middling Affliction by Alex Shvartsman

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Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &The Middling Affliction by Alex Shvartsman

Reviews

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Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &
The Middling Affliction by Alex Shvartsman