Hench

Hench

By Natalie Zona Walschots

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.

 

I think Hench is going to end up in my year-end best list.  At one point, I was telling my husband that I didn't want to accidentally spoil myself because I was having trouble predicting what was going to happen next.  Not that Hench is an original tale - the idea of the mundane in a superheroic world (and even the everyday cost of all that damage from saving the world) has been done before - the Watchmen tv series was amazing, although I Did Not Love the original comic - and ultimately, nothing in the story was THAT unexpected (except for the DETAILED and LENGTHY description of Supercollider's ultimate, uh, "new look"), but Walschots manages to tell it in a very exciting and compelling way.  

I didn't really love the beginning, or Anna, who works for supervillains because it pays (although apparently it doesn't even do that much, since she's living off ramen at the start) and winds up getting severely injured while on the job.  A couple reasons this didn't work for me: (1) she chose to align herself with a person who kidnaps and threatens to cut the finger off some kid, so does she really have the high ground here? and (2) her vendetta against superheroes really becomes justified only when we find out that Supercollider is an absolute trash bag.  If, for example, she'd been injured and focused her rage on a superhero who felt bad about it, we wouldn't empathize so much with her, and frankly, it's just chance that it was Supercollider.  Sort of like a broken clock being right twice a day - Anna was correct here, but wasn't it more luck than skill that led her to target Supercollider?  

But I would be much more interested to hear a non-American viewpoint of Anna's position, because in the US, it is very much an attitude of "You signed on with criminals, you are a criminal".  There are laws which basically impute crimes, like murder, to the "less culpable" members of the gang (like the getaway driver) just because you were complicit in the entire transaction.  In that sense, Anna isn't innocent.  She literally interviewed for the position of "bad guy" and walked intentionally into a life of crime.  On the other hand, even criminals have due process. Is any amount of force justified under any circumstances? Obviously the broad answer should be "no", but in the specific context of the book, this is where I think her position is weak, again: no, I don't think force is always justified, but there was about to be physical violence, with the director of that violence (Electric Eel) indicating that he was capable of doing even worse than the immediate finger-loss.  Just because Anna has the benefit in hindsight of calculating the lost life of the hench people versus a finger and money, what would have been the ultimate loss had Supercollider (or some other hero) not intervened? Would Electric Eel have stopped with money or a finger? She's very blase about the kidnapping and threats until her own life is on the line - Anna doesn't sign on to be a hench person because she thinks the superheroes are out of control until she's actually injured by one.  Only then does she embark on her holy mission of vengeance.  So why the high horse? Perhaps the sequel, if there is one, will explore further her assumption that superheroes create their own villains.  That's like saying laws create criminals.  Sure, without laws, we wouldn't have "crime" technically, but uh, murder would still happen. Is she really suggesting that no villain has a venal desire here? Or that the villains, who set out to create chaos, are better than the superheroes who do so carelessly?

The author mentions in an interview that some people never get past that portion and don't finish the book.  Obviously I did, and I liked it quite a bit.  There's something fascinating and attractive about competent people, good or evil, and obviously here, we discover that their mission is "righteous" (if there is such a thing in this world) since Supercollider is a huge dick.  

I also appreciated the involvement of Quantum, Supercollider's main squeeze, who ends up taking over the ultimate fight (while our protagonist, Anna, basically waits by the sidelines, as someone who is skilled only in data entry should be doing) although it could be seen as a real deus ex machina. 

I think there's also some parallels to be drawn (if one were so inclined) about the narrative taking over the reality.  Here, the idea of superheroes as well, heroic, is so ingrained that it actually gives Supercollider power (more than just, like, the power to plow into buildings without being prosecuted). I mean, what are we dealing with in society right now if not this idea that "feelings" trump "facts".  Another recent take on what it means to be "good" in today's world, where every choice actually implicates a net negative is The Good Place.   There's definitely a lot of scope for critical examinations of Hench, and I liked that it wasn't necessarily easy - you know, Anna doesn't become a better person by the end of it, it's hard to say whether justice was actually done, and even the person who "won" isn't happy.

Maybe it's just me climbing out of a rut, or maybe I was just in the mood, or maybe I've become a complete nihilist in the face of *all this*, but Hench was a refreshing delight.