Fast becoming a genre of its own, this book further takes on the superheroes as subjects of analysis in fiction mantle for the moment. Hench brings us Anna, a kind of wayward hench in between job…a free lancer by choice, who is playing around with the idea of taking on a permanent post. Her skills involve data analysis and other techie analyst skills. On a new job, she’s is significantly injured by the world’s most famous and possibly most powerful hero, Supercollider, and in her anger afterward she begins a blog that counts up the financial and human costs of heroes. This blog becomes both famous and infamous, and brings some complications to the reputation of heroes in the world. She draws the attention of the most powerful supervillain, Leviathan, Supercollider’s arch nemesis, who brings her onboard to work for him. The story goes from here.
There’s a looseness in this narrative that I do find very fetching. It’s not so plot and world-driven as some of the other novels and movies and tv shows along these lines in recent years. This looseness makes it feel a little more of an office job kind of book than simply one in which it turns out superheroes are bad, and that’s its biggest strengths. Its weaknesses comes from how well-trodden the territory has become of late and how this new book is entertaining, but doesn’t break anything wide open either.
(Photo: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49867430-hench)