Review: The Middling Affliction

The Middling Affliction by Alex Shvartsman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimers upfront: I got this via Netgalley (at no charge) for review, and I know the author slightly online. We're on the same writers' forum, and he's written me several very encouraging rejection notes for stories I've submitted to his Unidentified Funny Objects anthologies. I get a strong impression that he's a decent guy. I don't think any of this has influenced my review.

This is the promising first installment in an urban fantasy series, reminiscent of the Dresden Files. The protagonist isn't a private investigator who's also a wizard, though; he's a member of a vigilante group of wizards who secretly also isn't a wizard. He manages, by projecting a lot of confidence and using a lot of magic items (which he is able to use, but not recharge), to get away with it. That's not entirely plausible, when you step right back and think about it (what with the high price of magic items he repeatedly mentions and the fact that absolutely everyone else who does his job routinely uses spells and can apparently tell the difference), but the story's pace is such that I tended to just accept it and be carried along.

He's something called a "middling," neither mundane nor magically gifted, visually indistinguishable from a Gifted but without any personal ability to cast unaided magic - and also traditionally hated and feared by Gifted, for reasons that are no longer remembered by most people but are revealed in the course of the story. The inciting incident that gets him involved in events is an underground auction of another middling, who turns out to be a young woman who was kidnapped and is being sold probably for vivisection or sacrifice. The protagonist, a born protector, can't be having with that, and sets out to rescue her, which kicks off a whole series of investigations, chases, try-fail cycles, pitched battles, fraught conversations, betrayals and rescues. One of the rescues is pretty much literally a deus ex machina, but since it does turn out to be narratively justified (once behind-the-scenes maneuverings get taken into account) I'll allow it.

I referred to the story above as "promising," because it's solid without, for me, making it all the way to amazing. The author is better known for his short stories (and his humour; much to my relief, he didn't try too hard to make this story humourous, just let the banter happen where it needed to), and for an early novel this is sound in its craft and shows a lot of potential. Let's recall that the first Dresden Files books weren't nearly as good as the later ones.

Please don't think, either, that I'm damning it with faint praise. I enjoyed it, and expect to enjoy future entries in the series even more. And the door is left wide, wide open for more in the series by the ending, which sets up a sequel as strongly as a sequel can be set up, without detracting at all from the completeness of the first volume.

Definitely better than middling.

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