Hench - Natalie Zina Walschots

⭐ 9.0/10

(Originally written by Magdalene)

This book was quite unlike anything I've ever read before. In this world of superheroes and villains, Anna works as a freelance hench... but mostly working with data and spreadsheets. Villains also need people doing their boring grunt work! One day a job goes wrong, and she's a casualty when the biggest superhero Super Collider pushes her and her leg gets totally shattered. While she's out of work and recovering, she starts collecting data about how many people heroes kill and injure, and how much damage they bring about. When she releases her findings, she gets hired by the big villain Leviathan, and her main role is to find ways to make heroes' lives super annoying.

So yes, it's pretty much a henchwoman whose job it is to look at spreadsheets and cook up schemes to be annoying. I love that concept. Anna isn't really evil, and for her henching is just a job like any other, pretty much, until she starts to truly hate heroes for mindlessly causing injuries and damage. She definitely does questionable things, but she is not down for torturing kids or hurting people.

This book is a lot of things, which makes it hard to explain, but it was so cool. I love that it focuses on the people behind the heroes and villains, and satirizes the typical superhero stories. There's lots of grey morality, since you never know who you should be rooting for, because everyone is doing bad stuff. It went in lots of directions that were unexpected for me, and it was all very fun. But it also examines lots of aspects of superheroes and celebrity and social media in a really unique way.