Review: Kakistocracy

Kakistocracy by Alex Shvartsman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first book in this series got a spot in the Silver tier of my Best of the Year list for 2022, and this one hits 2023's Gold tier. It's a solid urban fantasy in the vein of the Dresden Files, complete with the protagonist getting beaten up a lot, facing multiple adversaries, being good at recruiting allies, resisting being recruited himself by powerful factions, and cleverly figuring out that sometimes when you think you have two problems, what you actually have is a problem and its solution.

Some disclaimers: I received a pre-publication copy via Netgalley for review, and I know the author slightly online (we belong to the same writers' forum, and he has encouragingly rejected several of my submissions to his annual Unidentified Funny Objects anthology). I don't believe this has materially affected my review.

There have been a few events in my lifetime that have such a widespread impact on the shape of the world or on how people think about it that I can often reliably date speculative fiction as being written before or after them, such as the fall of the Soviet Union and September 11, 2001. A lesser, but still significant such event occurred in 2016, and I could tell, reading the previous book in this series, that the stories from which the novel was assembled were written prior to it. That book featured a bombastic, self-aggrandizing New York property developer with notable hair and a TV show, and it was pretty clear who the model was, but he was treated as a joke and not taken at all seriously. This book was written after the watershed moment, and now that same character (who doesn't appear on stage, but has a lot of influence on events) has become mayor of New York, and turned it with amazing rapidity into a dystopian place in which ordinary people who are capable of using magic are being harassed by goons who are "confiscating" their magic items, and are also being forced to work, unpaid, for the good of the city (so the mayor can boast about what a good job he's doing). It turns out that the mayor is being manipulated from behind the scenes by another character from the first book, the real adversary, but the protagonist and his friends have to contend with a city in which the legitimate authority is doing things that they feel they must, in good conscience, oppose, throwing their entire set of principles into disarray.

That's not the whole of the plot, though it's a central thread. There are also fae warriors who are threatening to kill the protagonist, angels and demons who he has to mediate between (I'm not sure why anyone would pick the irreverent smartass Conrad Brent to be a mediator between prickly eternal adversaries, but he does a surprisingly effective job), a former adversary who's becoming probably an ally, problems involving Brent's current and previous bosses, a conflict of loyalties between several groups who approach doing good from different angles, and a nascent romance. There's a lot going on, and it's all entangled together beautifully and resolved with a combination of intelligence, courage, perseverance, working together, generosity, selflessness and strong adherence to principle, by way of a lot of sacrifice and hard choices.

It's skilled work, and enjoyable; the banter is amusing, the action exciting, and the character motivations fully believable. There's some good reflection amid the action, too.

More than solid, and recommended.

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