Hench (Hench, #1)

Hench (Hench, #1)

Natalie Zina Walschots

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy?  As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured.  And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she’s the lucky one. So, of course, then she gets laid off. With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks. Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing.  And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance. It’s not too long before she’s employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world. A sharp, witty, modern debut, Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics. 


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  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    What a weird quirky book, I liked it a lot. Not exactly what I was expecting but it worked.


    This part was 10/10:
    “No one is willing to make some bitch the head of the greatest superhero team in the world”

    “Well, you’re precisely the kind of bitch I’d like to see in charge more often”

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    Smart, funny, and ruthlessly sharp, Hench reads like The Office and Avengers: Age of Ultron had a baby, and that baby is mad as hell. The concept beneath it - a low-level henchperson to supervillains who happens to be a bit of a stats nerd calculates just how much damage superheroes actually cost the world they claim to be saving - is brilliant. But the execution of that concept is just as strong, which is, tragically, not always the case with a great idea. Anna is a fantastically interesting, compelling character in a fascinating superheroic world, while the action clips along at a fast pace (even when said action is more like intense data analysis than an epic super-battle) (though there are some of those, too). I'd love to see Hench as a movie; it's searing, cinematic, and rich with serious ideas about heroism and morality, while still being extremely funny.


    Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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