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.
Author Biography:
Alex Shvartsman is a writer, translator, game designer, and anthologist. His
adventures so far have included traveling to over 30 countries, playing a card
game for a living, and building a successful business.
Over 120 of his short stories have appeared in Analog, Nature, Strange
Horizons, Fireside, Weird Tales, Galaxy’s Edge, and many other venues. He
won the WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction in 2014 and was a two-time
finalist (2015 & 2017) for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar
Fiction. His political fantasy novel Eridani’s Crown was published in
2019.
Alex’s translations from Russian have appeared in The Magazine of
Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Apex, Strange Horizons,
and other venues.
He’s the editor of the Unidentified Funny Objects series of humorous SF/F,
as well as a variety of other anthologies, including The Cackle of Cthulhu
(Baen), Humanity 2.0 (Arc Manor), and Funny Science Fiction
(UFO). He’s the editor and publisher of Future Science Fiction Digest,
a magazine that focuses on international fiction.
His website is www.alexshvartsman.com
and his Twitter handle is @AShvartsman.
Alex has resided in Brooklyn, NY for over 30 years and draws on his
experience as a New Yorker in writing The Middling Affliction where Brooklyn is
more than merely a background.
