Book cover for Kakistocracy by Alex Shvartsman

Kakistocracy

2023 Released
240 Pages
5-6 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
CAEZIK SF & FantasyISBN 9781647100827
If you do it well, lying is every bit as effective as magic.

Conrad Brent has no innate magic, so he bluffs a lot and uses a myriad of magical items to protect Brooklyn from monsters and arcane threats. As a member of the Watch, the group that protects the mundane humans from such dangers, he risks his life on a regular basis. Sometimes twice before lunch. Sometimes during lunch, when he dares order his food from a street cart.

After regaining his position in the Watch which he'd temporarily lost due to the machinations of a variety of evil-doers, Conrad doesn't want to take any risks he doesn't have to. But now his boss is missing, there's a totalitarian new regime in City Hall oppressing all magic users, and the mayor has aligned himself with a diabolical villain.

In order to save the day, Conrad must team up with a recovering necromancer to mediate a dispute between two ancient enemy factions, solve a mystery of a warded house adjacent to a cemetery, and stand with his friends against tyranny.

That is, if the interdimensional fae assassins don't get him first.


Alex Shvartsman

Alex Shvartsman is the author of over 120 short stories, published in Analog, Nature, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. 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 translations have appeared in F&SF, Apex, and Samovar. Alex has edited over a dozen anthologies, including the Unidentified Funny Objects series, and is the editor-in-chief of Future Science Fiction Digest.

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