Natalie Zina WalschotsRecensioni

I don't like writing book reviews, but there's something I need to say about this book: WOW. Lots of WOWs.

audio fiction (14.25hrs) - bi/pan data-crunching henchwoman (Anna) finds her temp work contract cancelled after suffering a brutal injury from the hero Super-Collider, but that's just the start of chapter 1. --CW/TW: language, cartoonish violence, threat of knife violence (Junior's pinky finger will survive unscathed, but not before several stressful moments of suspense), gory violence..

Super Funny audiobook, so glad I finally picked this one up. Alex McKenna's narration is great with excellent comedic timing, though bestie June's voice can be annoying in larger doses (fortunately her part is relatively minor).

The audiobook is over 14 hours long, and I thought it might drag but actually I found myself savoring the experience. Can't wait for the author's next book (due out soon)!

Action

Loved this!

Totally unique, action packed, thought provoking.

Totally badass women, nerds, and misfits taking on societal problems and deciding what it really means to be good or evil.

Friendship, office politics, big business. It’s all there.

Very LGBTQ friendly characters.

Totally want this to be a TV series.

I really enjoyed this one. Had more of The Boys about it than The Venture Bros, but comparisons to both could be made. It was dark, and went places I did not expect, but it worked hard to portray the villains as not in it for the sake of evil, but more as antagonists to those who labeled themselves as heroes. Anna was a great main character, I really enjoyed her point of view. She is an angry character, but not without merit, so she is a very sympathetic character. The other villains and heroes were interesting too. It was a smart, compelling take on superheroes and the collateral damage they cause.

Delightful, inclusive. P really enjoying it

4.5 stars. Good premise, good plot, hard to put down

DNF @ Page 230

I might come back to this later. Admittedly I'm not really into the superhero stuff, but I thought the villain's perspective was interesting. And it had it's funny moments as well.

I don't remember why I picked up this book initially, but I do know that one reason it stayed on my TBR was because Seanan McGuire blurbed it. Given how much I love McGuire's superhero stories (the Velveteen Vs. series) I figured this one should be a no-brainer. And ultimately, it was. There were a few stumbling blocks on the way to my enjoyment of the book, but by the end I was hooked and curious where the story goes.

Narrator Alex McKenna was good, but the audiobook didn't work for me: I couldn't skim or skip the descriptions of the injuries. Body horror is not among my preferred reading themes, and the injuries described often came close enough to hit me the same way. I much prefer being able to read this text at my own pace, and being able to skim the parts that are close to body horror. I'm not going to go into CW details for it, but just be aware that if you are squeamish when it comes to injuries or body mods, this might not be the book for you, especially the final confrontation. (Or at the very least, pick a format where you can skim the parts you don't want to focus on.)

Another issue I had with the book was the lack of dialogue tags. This is often a minor thing in books, but for this one there were times when there were gatherings or meetings and lots of people talking and very few indications of who was saying what. Most of the characters weren't developed enough as personalities before this for me to pick up on who was speaking without the dialogue tags. While these conversations might have helped to develop the personalities if I knew who was speaking, since I didn't they ended up just being confusing. (Sometimes funny, but still confusing.)

Also, it seems petty, but it bugged me that there were a lot of cases where a question was ended with a period. I still knew it was a question, and it may have been an intentional decision to make the question sound more flat and demanding, but I didn't like it.

However, none of that should by any means diminish the fact that I liked the book as a whole. Once I figured out why the audiobook wasn't working for me, I zipped through the ebook. I love the premise of it: a temp worker getting injured and researching how much damage the heroes do in the name of the greater good. I actually surprised myself by mostly liking the main character Anna as well, even as she began her villainous origin story and made choices I disagree with. Many of the side characters have great potential and were fun to read about.

The pace is slower at the beginning and (much) faster near the end, but the whole book flows together well and presents a solid picture for this alternate universe where superheroes and supervillains destroy the lives of everyday people in their conflicts. I did prefer the beginning of the book, where Anna was a temp and getting by on the fringes, and I missed the interactions she had at the beginning of the story that were missing at the end (I can't say more, because spoilers) but I did end up enjoying the whole thing.½

Great, great, great. I loved this book and these characters. So much depth and thoughtfulness in each one.

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday. The verdict: probably not.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Alex McKenna. Her narration was easy enough to follow, but her character voices were too cartoonish for my tastes. Since this is a superhero/villain type story, that might have been an intentional choice and/or a choice that others would appreciate. It’s not a style I like, though. Aside from that, I don’t have any particular complaints.

Story
This is kind of a subverted superhero story. In that respect, it reminded me of the graphic novel Watchmen which is the only other story along those lines I can remember encountering. The setting is an alternate version of earth where there are both superheroes and supervillains with special powers. The story focuses on Anna, a “hench”. A hench is a normal person who chooses to do the grunt work for supervillains. These henches are often hired out through temp agencies. Anna is basically a data analyst. She starts crunching numbers and finds that superheroes do an enormous amount of damage both to property and people in the process of their “heroic” actions.

I enjoyed the first half more than the second half, although the second half has more action. I mostly liked reading about Anna, but I didn’t always like her choices and I often found her to be hypocritical. To a large extent this is a revenge story, and I’m not usually a big fan of those. I couldn’t always get behind her decisions or her motivations, and even less so for some of the other character. It was pretty melodramatic at times, and some things didn’t make a lot of sense, but I guess that’s a superhero story for you. One of the more mundane aspects I had trouble with was the idea that Anna was placed in charge when Leviathan was kidnapped, even though she really shouldn’t have had the experience or the expertise to be a logical choice by that point.

There was at least one part of this book that was super gory. Honestly it was so over the top that I couldn’t take it seriously or even really be horrified by it, but it went on and on and on. For that reason, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone who doesn’t like gore in their reading material.

The main story comes to a conclusion, but there are several threads left unanswered and the end of the story is a pretty clear lead into the next book. The writing was ok and the story held my interest, but I didn’t enjoy this enough to want to continue the series. I might have appreciated this more if I were a bigger fan of the superhero subgenre.

I'll start by saying how aweful the cover if this book is. The thing does little justice to the content!
There's a lot to like about the story. Not too much time wasted on world-building and all but i wish a bit more was told about other important characters. Like the girl, on the Auditor's team, that was used to mess with Accelerator.
Quantum Entanglement too, very little room for her!
Other than that, i can be counted among those waiting for a sequel.

2023 book #12. 2020. Anna is a data entry clerk how gets work through a temp agency that supplies office workers to super villains. When her latest boss (the Electric Eel) battles super hero Super Collider, she gets badly injured and vows revenge. Well written and engaging.

This was a book I didn't even know existed until it was suggested to me LibraryThing. And this book is near perfect for what it is. Smart characters, reasons for why things happen, plus it has the phrase "The Excel Pervert" to describe a character that is a genius with tables. Where I think the book shines (and I suspect that others may disagree with me), is the way the author handles backstories - things that don't matter. For example, our leading heroine, Anna Tromedlov and her parents are estranged. Why, doesn't matter. Or that Anna is has superpowers, but its up to the reader to guess. They don't matter. What does matter is that Anna know how people work and how to use that information to break people.

Of course, this is a book about with very generic superheroes and villains - think superman rather than batman. And while the cost of a world with stereotypical superheroes includes buildings being damaged, there is a real injury to those on the sideline. This is a book that explores that. Its part revenge story, but its also part accountability.

This is a book written for this generation. Superheros as metaphor for gender, or Superheros as metaphor big corporations with no accountability. Also, throws in a bit of finding yourself. Also, social media as a weapon.

And last, I really appreciate that the characters here while obviously gay, or trans, or other, they are written fully. There is no "gay" character, there's just a man whose marriage broke when he switched to being a bad guy, or a character that uses the pronoun 'They', but is a cybernetic wiz. The only exception to this is our superman analog - but, there's a great explanation for this, and really does make you think about the harm that comes from forcing kids to a certain mold.

This is such a fun concept — taking a look at superheroes and villains from the side of the office jobs who keep their empires going. Anna is an excellent narrator with a fun voice; Tatiana Maslany would be a good choice to play her if this were a TV show. Meanwhile, I pictured Supercollider looking like Syndrome from The Incredibles. And although this starts out somewhat lighthearted, the story does escalate quickly. Anna grapples with post-traumatic stress and a long, painful recovery from a serious injury. The final showdown gets gory, too, to the point where I yelped out loud at some particularly gross moments. I imagine there’s a healthy percentage of readers who would want a sequel, but I think it ended perfectly the way it did. The last line was excellent. I recommend this book if you like media about the superhero world that look at it in a new way, in which protagonists don’t take themselves too seriously.

Anna is a low-level hench who prefers to work on spreadsheets and not go out into the field. She works for villains, whatever. After being injured by a hero, however, she finds a new purpose to life - to prove that heroes cause more damage than they ever save.

It's a "realistic" view of living in a world where people have super powers from the perspecitive of a person low in the hierarchy. It explores the gray area between good and evil, with a nod to the systems that enable them.

CW: Body horror

I did really enjoy the ride but afterwards it left me feeling like I did with Dexter when I read it first, I came out of it and then realised that I empathised with the Villain. Kudos to the author for achieving that.
In a world with supervillains and superheroes there are temp agencies for henchpeople - referred to throughout as Henches and muscle - referred to throughout as Meat; which brings the true situation of some of them to stark light. Yes you work for villains, but is it any worse than working for a greedy corporation or a bank? Evil is subjective and sometimes very seductive. Anna (a wonderfully everywoman name to start) is close to the breadline, her temp jobs are very short-term and honestly she's struggling. When she gets a job where one of her tasks is to stand there as a token female behind a villain as he makes demands, it's not difficult for her to go with it, eating is a wonderful hobby.
But the superheroes arrive and she's collateral damage (and the villain lays her off with flowers while in hospital). A shattered leg and a long convalescence she starts to look into other collateral damage caused by superheroes (not villains!) and she discovers that there is a lot (not new territory, there was at least one graphic novel about the same concept, but rare territory) this leads to a blog and attention from both heroes and villains and the heroes aren't very convincing that they are the good guys when they ask her to stop.
It's about going down a path, without intending it, that leads to evil and how, honestly, often the side of good isn't great. It's also about the power of data and manipulation and how sometimes you can do bad things and think that you're doing good. And that sometimes you can do the right things for the wrong reasons and sometimes that's the best thing that can happen.
I really was sucked in and read it quite quickly, I hope Natalie Zina Walschots writes more.

This book was one of the 5 books in Canada Reads in 2021. It didn't win and I wasn't particularly interested at the time but then a friend read it and said she thought I would like it. So when I saw it in my library's digital audiobook catalogue I decided to download it. For a book about superheroes and villains it is not particularly comedic but I thought it was a good listen.

Anna works for a temporary agency that supplies office workers to villains. It's a dead end job really but she met her best friend, June, while applying for a job and that helped. One day she was asked to take part in a press conference a villain was holding to demand ransom for a kidnapped child. Her job was to just stand behind the villain and look fierce which she could do. Then a bunch of superheroes came through the window, freed the boy and caused mayhem among the villains. Anna was badly injured in the ensuing melee but she counted herself lucky that she was still alive because quite a few of the group were not. Unable to work she was unable to pay her rent or her bills but June took her in and nursed her back to health. While she was recuperating it occurred to Anna that this was not the only time that people were killed or injured as a result of the actions of superheroes. Using her skills to examine data she decides that this can not continue; superheroes have to be reined in somehow. Her data come to the attention of one of the top villains and he hires her to generate bad publicity for the superheroes. The superhero who injured her takes her efforts badly and he tries to stop her, killing her if necessary. Eventually there is an epic showdown between good and evil. Except who are the good guys and who are the evil ones? That is the real theme of the book.

A Google search doesn't show anything else written by this author, at least not in novel format. Let's hope she has more in the works.

In a slightly alternate modern setting, heroes and villains slug it out every day. There are temp agencies for villains, and we met Anna as she is going in for a call for data entry work for a villain. She has few friends and they all also do temp work for villains. Anna gets an onsite job for a minor villain and as working as background setting when the villain is working a kidnapping plot. An “A” level hero stops it and Anna is badly injured. During her healing she comes up with a spreadsheet on the cost of heroes on people lives. Her spreadsheets get her a job with an A level villain and then things really get interesting. The worldbuilding in the book is great and lots of thought on the little bits that build a better background and expand the story. By the end of the story there is room for more in this setting but it does end on a satisfying note.

I also did listen to an audio review copy of the book and the narrator does an excellent job with the sarcasm between friends during the story.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss and NetGalley

Angry and a little bloody. Collateral damage from superheroes far outweighs to benefit. The mayor’s son is in minor physical danger but saving him creates hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills and property damage.

A fun take on the battle between super heroes and super villains. I liked gig-work view of henchmen, side kicks and support staff.

Borrowed in ebook from my library--yay libraries!

So I'm reading along, yeah powered people do damage, the big hero hurts our MC, so she starts figuring out what these heroes are costing society. A supervillain hires her to go big on that, cool... I wonder why she doesn't spreadsheet villain costs... Right about the time that became actively annoying, the underlying structure of heroes comes clear. By chapter 8 (the last one) I was anxious to learn how this turns out.

And now I am done and I... I'm disappointed.

If this isn't book 1 of at least two, it ends poorly. If it is getting a part 2, I wish the publisher had indicated that because without it, I'm forced to assume that was not contracted, making this ending underwhelming, and annoying. And, in a few significant ways, even sexist.

The plot challenges manufactured heroism and corruption, and that's fair, but what many of these people needed is intense therapy. And villains also cost society as they always have, powered or not, but that's never addressed. And then there's a lot left unaddressed. And then, that end.

The author had me for less than half the book, then lost me.

I've read so many mediocre books this year that I'm gonna give this five stars, even though it's really a four and a half star read for me. I picked this up because I'm slowly slogging though the rest of the GR Awards sci-fi nominees, and I'm glad I did! (Even though I categorize this as fantasy, not sci-fi).

So much fun to read, good writing, great characters! I love the less serious take on super heroes and villains, where they are mostly just self-important, pompous fools who constantly monologue and don't really consider the real life consequences of their actions. And even more so the perspective of the minions (or Henches) who just try to make a living and not become collateral while they are doing it.

I'm really looking forward to what this author comes out with, next.

Ah clear "meh" from me for Hench. Great start, funny, entertaining, fast paced, and a very different setting for superheros.

It started to slow down halfway, the reversed roles seemed to reverse to right themselves (villains being heroes turning kind of bad again), and after an interesting showdown an unenthusiastic ending.½

When I started reading this book, I didn't realize it was a fantasy / science fiction. I thought, when they spoke of henchwork, they meant people who worked for drug dealers, politicians, etc., when they talked about evil doers.
It turns out, in this book that there's a temp agency that hires people to work for evildoers and superheroes in this world. The protagonist has been working gigs with evildoers, and with one particular evildoer, for a short while, when one press conference involving the kidnapping of the mayor's son goes wrong. The evildoer has invented a gadget called a Mood Ring. It enables the mayor's son to be able to chop his own finger off, in order to send it to his father and prove that he's really been kidnapped. Supercollider, the baddest of the superheroes, flies in the window at the very last second when the kid is about to chop his finger off, and stops the boy. She ends up with a shattered leg, collateral damage from Supercollider brushing by her, and out of work.
She notices that there's no compensation from the superhero who collided with her, wreaking havoc in her life. She wonders if other people like her have had their lives and health shattered by superheroes, and since she's good at math, she starts running the numbers. She realizes there's a huge amount of people whose lives and health has been wrecked by these "heroes," and a humongous amount of money in damages involved.
Okay, so now she's got these numbers, and she wants to know what she should do with them? So, she starts writing a blog. With hashtags. It takes quite a while for anybody to notice her, but suddenly she's trending. She gets a job with the baddest of the evil doers, with the most resources. It's the job of her dreams.

This was really good. The ending is a little over the top, but I love the premise: chaos has no comparison to a woman used.