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.

Ten Second Reviews

Men to Avoid in Art and in Life

By Nicole Tersigni

This was like the froth on a cup of coffee: fun to contemplate, but when it came to drinking the stuff, basically intangible.  I like the idea, but maybe it's better enjoyed on a scrolling read, rather than in book form.  There's some attempt to match topic and art, but not always successful.  Like I said, briefly enjoyed, and briefly remembered.  

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery

Edited by Christopher Golden and Rachel Autumn Deering

Well, first of all, it's very hard to compete with the gold standard of witch stories, which is, obviously, Nine Witch Tales, by, ahem, "Abby Kedabra", published in 1968. But there's always room for second place! 

Okay, I know this is dumb, but I liked the length of the stories.  And I know, I know, that sounds like I'm damning with faint praise, but honestly, if I'm reading short stories, one of things that bugs me is when I get like, five twenty-page stories, and then like, one seventy-page story. That is no longer a story, sir, that is a novella.  Also, as much as I like shakin' things up (to wit: very little) I much prefer orderliness.  Anyway, to the actual review!

Some good ones, some not so good ones. Of the ones that stuck with me, I have to call out Sarah Langan's The Night Nurse, which is definitely NOT something I should have been reading as a pregnant person and Tananarive Due's Last Stop on Route Nine was chilling and spooky, and took me down a Dozier School for Boys hole, which is where I thought the story was going (it wasn't but it was still satisfyingly spooky).  Angela's Slatter's Widows' Walk, Hillary Monahan's Bless Your Heart, Ania Ahlborn's The Debt, Chesya Burke's Haint Me Too (which felt inspired by Beloved, at least in the beginning style), and Theodora Goss', How to Become a Witch-Queen,were all above average, enjoyable witchery stories.  

I felt a bit let down by Helen Marshall's The Nekrolog, and Kristin Dearborn's The Dancer, both of which were really great, but wrapped up without a satisfying resolution. Both felt like they were excerpts from a much larger universe, but even thought the world was interesting and well-done, I wanted something more complete in my stories.

I also feel like calling out Rachel Caine's Home: A Morganville Vampires Story, and Amber Benson (yes, of Buffy fame)'s This Skin, which were my least favorites, by far. Home was part of a larger universe thing, and I don't know if the people were more sympathetic if you read the books, but in the story, this witch comes to town, looking for a drop of blood from the vampires who murdered her and her husband in order to resurrect her husband and her murderers basically are huge assholes to her, basically being all "she's a terrible person, blah blah blah" even though they're the ones who killed her and frankly should be expecting revenge. And then she doesn't even do anything that bad to them, she just leaves once she gets the blood.  This Skin was a let down, again with a protagonist who didn't draw you in, one of those ones who thinks they're soooooooo much smarter than everyone else, and when things don't work out, it's hard to tell if it's because we're meant to believe that the narrator did get away with murder because they're just that smart, or because the narrator is an idiot and has just puffed themselves up into buying their own hype. 

Ten Second Reviews

Semiosis

By Sue Burke

Colonists from Earth wanted the perfect home, but they’ll have to survive on the one they found. They don’t realize another life form watches...and waits...

Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet's sentient species and prove that humans are more than tools.

Ooo, I liked this one a lot, especially in the beginning, which is when it was really out there.  Towards the end I felt like it became more conventional sci-fi-y with a struggle against another colony, but the beginning, where you just don't know what it going to happen next??? Fabulous!  It felt really fresh too, like a whole new idea (although I'm sure that something somewhere had the same germ (haha, no pun intended) of an idea) and even when we do get to the point where they're in constant communication together and they're pretty clear that there isn't going to be another betrayal, it's a well written story.   I'm waffling on reading the second, mostly because the reviews are iffy and frankly, this doesn't need a sequel.  But on the other hand, it was a fun, fascinating world to spend time in, and even just reading about their day-to-day survival was entertaining in Burke's hands. 

The Witches Are Coming

By Lindy West

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one.

Hmm, what to say on this one? It's undeniably funny, well-written, and passionate.  But so GODDAMN DEPRESSING. Not unrelentingly depressing, or I would have stopped reading.  But notice that West had to end the book on a couple of chapters whose throughline is basically "Don't give up! The world is not a complete dumpster fire yet! There are still some nice things (trees) even though we are rapidly killing them and everyone else and heading towards total annihilation of all that we currently enjoy - oh wait, this is depressing again."  I don't know if the intent was to energize and electrify, but all it did was depress and demoralize.  It was a funny depression though.  Okay, I'm gonna be real here: I am hungover and mentally checked out on this review.  What is my review? That I liked the writing but the message was sad and I would read something else by her, and it had nice short chapters.  Honestly what I should have done was pull quotes because they're all hilarious nuggets, but obviously, I ain't doing that.  I really liked the Adam Sandler chapter, because IT IS VERY TRUE.  WHY IS HE ALWAYS SO MAGICALLY GIFTED?? HE IS AVERAGE, MAKE HIM AVERAGE.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

By Maria Semple

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence--creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.

There are so many reviews and articles about this book, nothing I have to say will be original or fresh.  Luckily, I haven't read any of them, so I am completely unintimidated, and I will forge on bravely in spite of banality! Actually, what's really killing me is that I have simply too many other things I could be doing, which are a lot more fun than walking paths than have been trod over aplenty. I'm like, two books behind in my reviews again. 

When we come down to it, the book is good but it does not inspire me into fits of passionate defense or critique.  I liked it, I stayed up late to see where it would go (Bernadette), but now I've finished it I don't feel compelled by it (for better or for worse).

It does accomplish what it sets out to do: a razor sharp satire of a certain upper middle class, tech snobs and private schools, all wrapped up in a bizarrely appropriate midlife crisis that's apparently been dragging on for fifteen years, and a weird right turn towards Antarctica.  It balances a strange line of no one being likeable, but you kinda start to like them anyway.

My biggest nag with the book is that it ended too abruptly. I suppose it's a good problem to have, that your readers want more, but it basically ends with a letter Bernadette wrote weeks and weeks before the chronological end of the book (in which Bee and Bernadette's husband manage to track her down in Antarctica) and we're left with some kinda dangling emotional threads: sure, Bernadette will design a new station at the bottom of the world, but what about the baby with Soo-Lin that her husband is having because of all that time they thought she was dead? What about the emotional trauma left in her wake? Bernadette, I don't care how awful you felt that a house you built was bought and bulldozed by an angry neighbor - cocooning yourself and becoming increasingly bitter and introverted is how you get to the point that your husband believes you need to be incarcerated for your own good.

I can't tell if we're supposed to feel bad that Bernadette's been (somewhat) falsely accused, and certainly everyone should have the ability to live peacefully unimpeded by nosy neighbors and fellow mothers, but her crabby attitude extended towards her family as well.  I mean, she did outsource her life to the Russian mob, but even worse, she outsourced it to someone she was only paying 75 cents an hour.

The title works overtime - not only Where'd You Go geographically, but where did you go spiritually? Bernadette basically zonked out of her life, and while it's great that she was able to maintain strong connections with her daughter, in the immortal words of About a Boy, you need more than one: you need backup.  All that being said: I would definitely read a sequel.  Where'd You Go, Soo-Lin?

16: A Book With A Question In The Title

01: A Book Becoming a Movie in 2019 (Don't ask - but explanations are found in Black Future Month)