Hench: A Novel

You know a book is good when you put it down after finishing a four-hour marathon read from beginning to end and simply go, “Wow.” I have always loved stories about imperfect people, especially in a superhero context. Stories that explore the grey areas of personality and the fact that very rarely is someone all good or all bad. Very rarely does a villain not have some kind of backstory that explains why they’ve made the choices they have. Hench is just one such exploration, and Walschots does it masterfully. I hate to compare Hench to other things, but if I had to go with modern literary sales pitches, I’d say it is Megamind meets The Boys. Atmospherically, the book is kind of dark, without straying into grimdark. It’s not a warm-fuzzies kind of story. But to balance the darkness, Walschots weaves in wry humor and thoughtfulness that is so kind it’s almost painful, knowing that that kind of kindness might just be the most fantastical element of the whole story. The characters all feel like real people, the kind of people who end up in places they maybe didn’t expect, but one way or another here they are because bills have got to be paid. Anna is very relatable, and I can really sympathize with parts of her story. But what I really loved, was that it’s practically competence porn. Shows like The West Wing are enjoyable to me because I love witnessing excellent people do excellent things. There’s nothing more satisfying than a job well done. And Anna is very competent.…

A great world of superheroes and supervillains with the story line around - a henchman. Overall, great action sequences, and good dialogs. The fight scenes seemed to jump around a lot and there is some missed opportunity in the plot there. I would have enjoyed it more without irrelevant strands of lesbian/gay relationship; this was a missed opportunity to add depth to the characters and story, but the way they were written added nothing to the plot and could have simply been left out. Overall; a very decent first novel and mostly entertaining and fun read.

I am not a big superhero person. I don’t actively go out and look for superhero books or watch superhero movies. They can be entertaining, but they aren’t really my bag of oats. However, when I saw Hench, I was exactly in the sort of mood to read something that isn’t my typical. I also kind of really like stories about antiheroes or “the bad guy” and this seemed to slot right into both of those categories quite nicely. More, I love moral ambiguity, and you really get a lot of that in Hench. Anna works as a hench, or think of her as technical support/office grunt for supervillains (you also learn about “meat”. Think: hired muscle.). Anna’s sort of a data genius, which ends up being the core of the book later on. Anyway, Anna works as a hench for a supervillain. Things go awry and she ends up getting seriously injured. In her recuperation process, she starts studying these streams of data, which is the pin around which the whole book turns. I hesitate to say more. Discovery is half the fun. Anna, however, works for the bad guy, which means some of the things she does are questionable and may or may not make you a bit squeamish. That being said, while you go into this book knowing from page one that Anna works for the “bad guy”, the so called “good guys” don’t look that good for long. In fact, the way the author created this equal playing field across the spectrum for all of her characters was nothing short of spectacular. While Anna has this dark, sarcastic sense of humor…

Part of this book were infuriating and the main characters is built up in a way that you can’t help but root for her. I would say the ‘bad’ guys in this book are so inherently bad it’s ridiculous but then again I think anyone who know a text book narcissist would agree that they’re as realistic as any self righteous zealot you’d meet in real life regarding their cognitive dissonance and their groundless beliefs in being right regardless of evidence otherwise. I would also say that the public in this book may come off equally frustrating, may be asking why doesn’t anyone do anything? Then you just really have to think about how gross injustice is currently treated in our society. Vague spoilers about the themes: Regardless, it a fun read even if you take the underlying theme to heart. In the context of this book, being a villain is a good thing, being a villain is the same as being a really astute reporter, it’s keeping people publicly accountable for there actions and speaking up in the face of evil, even if that evil is apathy and rigid morality regarding the ‘greater good’ despite the high cost of human life. What is it to be a good person, how much is a single life worth against the lives of many, is stopping nonviolent crimes worth a human life, hurting people? At what point is it one to take life and can their really be justice if there the judge & jury is a single person? I liked it, it was well done, a creative take on how labels and morals can be subjective given…

I haven't finished a book for enjoyment in waaay too long. "Hench" easily resolved that with its funny, bitter and real world- building. As I was reading it I imagined many inferior versions of itself. One version would have reveled in the silliness of the premise without making the details jump out so poetically or detailing the different forms of pain of its lead characters. Real-life sidekicks and henches as constantly at-risk temp workers is a fascinating concept for exploring marginalization, financial precarity, and feeling like you'll never amount to anything. But it also could have been so much more cartoonish and goofy than it ended up being. I also could have imagined a Zack Snyder-y dark and gritty version of this book that took Anna's glory in "badness" up to 11 and smoothed out the weird humor and rough edges. Again, the real book is so much better than this. I had a few quibbles with the trajectory of the book, the way the dark humor and offkilter observations were replaced with "let's get to it" action over time - it absolutely made sense for Anna's progression but i missed the old style. I also found some of the romantic progressions - and the way Anna constantly crushes on friends and enemies - a little unnecessary. Still, this book is so worth reading, even if you aren't a superhero fan - we all live in a world Marvel and DC have conquered and are in that way more like Anna than we'd like to admit. Living in their shadows, begging for their scraps of fame…