Natalie Zina Walschots (Doom: Love Poems for Supervillains) turns the superhero genre on its head with Hench, an action-packed first novel with an unlikely heroine.
Anna, June and Greg are typical millennial temps: snarky, quirky and apathetic, trying to eke out a living with maxed-out credit cards and cramped apartments. Life would have most likely gone on in its predictable banal fashion had Anna not been badly hurt on the job, laid off as a result and angry enough to turn her injury into a righteousness aimed at revenge.
As a Hench, a part-time employee who provides menial services to supervillains, Anna had been doing data management. What initially seemed a dull talent (June has extrasensory perception; Greg is a computer genius) turns into a razor-sharp skillset under the tutelage of Leviathan, the supervillain who offers Anna a new full-time contract. The job: use her data-mining skills to identify and exploit weaknesses, taking apart each superhero until they publicly self-destruct. Leviathan's focus on Supercollider, the most famous superhero, pairs nicely with Anna's; she was a collateral damage victim of Supercollider's actions. But it isn't until Leviathan is captured during the penultimate battle that Anna is confronted with how far toward becoming a villain she's willing to go in order to destroy the hero who holds Leviathan hostage.
Witty and wry, the scenes flash by, evocative of comic books, with tight prose and punchy dialogue, moving the plot toward the inevitable battle between good and evil. But in Hench, which side to root for is decidedly complicated. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co.