In Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots, Anna Tromedlov is a minor henchperson to villains. After a job goes awry, she is injured by the superhero Supercollider and she starts doing research to determine how much collateral damage superheroes cause. She gets the attention of the supervillain Leviathan and soon then embark on a mission to discredit superheroes, focusing on Supercollider, of course.
It's not a perfect book. I could list several things I found imperfect about it (Anna never seems to take responsibility for her actions, the absolute ridiculousness of villains acting like heroes are the bad guys and never quite justifying their reasoning, the rest of the world not seeming to pay attention to the damage caused by all these people, and don't even get me started on the actual process of determining who does and doesn't have powers), but a book doesn't have to be perfect for me to realize that this is what I want to be reading. Here is some of what I love.
1. Anna - The main character here is a nerd. She loves to collect data, make spreadsheets, and is creative in her solutions. She's also incredibly self-absorbed and honestly never thinks about outcomes affecting anyone other than herself. She's complicated, she's ridiculous, and I found myself rooting for her even though I might have found myself seriously annoyed with her if I met her in real life.
2. Depictions of work - This is essentially a story about work. There are small, intricated details about the number of monitors Anna has on her desk, what's available in the break room, and how team dynamics change when a new person comes in. It's all sort of glowy and romanticizing work, but that's okay, isn't it? I heard "competence porn" used to describe Mark Watney in The Martian and I think that's the same thing I enjoyed in this book.
3. Financial insecurity - We meet Anna as she's on her way to the Temp Agency and we learn she's broke and worried about how to pay the bills and I like that this book doesn't shy away from what is so common in the United States, where more than 60% of the population is living paycheck to paycheck. It is rare for fictional accounts to include people fretting about money or staying up night trying to figure out how to pay the bills. It just goes to show that you can write about working class folks AND still have a plot.
4. Women save the day - I'm not going to give too much away, but in the end, the women are the ones who solve the problem. I can't help but find that awesome.
While I acknowledge that this book is definitely not for everyone, I really enjoyed it. The worldbuilding is wonderful and the characters are real, if flawed. I appreciated the perspective of a superhero story told from behind the scenes and from characters who are usually considered more peripheral. 4.5/5 stars
