With a title like something from a B-movie, The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is a wild mashup of comics, sci-fi, fairy tales, thrillers and literary fiction. The Regional Office is a secret global organization located deep beneath the Midtown Manhattan skyscraper that houses its cover company, Morrison World Travel Concern. Directed by the administrator, Mr. Niles, and his co-founder, the mystic Oyemi, the Regional Office is a complex hierarchy of women oracles and operatives with a mission to save the world "from destruction, from self-annihilation, from the evil forces of darkness, from interdimensional war strikes, from alien forces." And so they do--until their recruiter and trainer, Henry, and top operative Emma turn against the organization and stage a dawn attack.
Manuel Gonzales's (The Miniature Wife) rambunctious storytelling reflects a youth of video games and Terry Brooks novels. But his spitfire first novel doesn't shy from the more prosaic themes of identity, love, loyalty and ambition. Its violence and bot-war shenanigans are interrupted by excerpts from a presumed scholarly study of the Regional Office's history, as if it were an organization with a trajectory of growth and decline, like some sort of posse comitatus.
The Regional Office Is Under Attack! may occasionally go a bit over the top, but Gonzales brings it down to earth. When laser bullets are flying and severed mechanical limbs are crawling along the halls, he reminds readers that above this underground New York City fantasy world are a "piss-poor Mets team and so-so Affleck movies." When push comes to shove (as it often literally does), Gonzales pulls off an amusing winner. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.