“You know what’s more criminal than anything I have ever done? That you’ve been overshadowed by that lantern-jawed cockwit when you’re obviously better than him in every imaginable way.”
Pain crossed her face. “Well. No one is willing to make some bitch the head of the greatest superhero team in the world.”
She was repeating something that had been said to her; I could hear it in her voice. [loc. 4711]
Anna Tromedlov is a hench, short for henchperson, short for expendable staff in a villain's entourage. The work -- mostly temp contracts, via an agency -- is generally less unpleasant than other menial jobs, and Anna's more likely to be employed for her spreadsheet skills than for anything especially nefarious. She's working for Electric Eel, at 'some tech unveiling thing', when it all goes wrong: the hero Supercollider shows up in the nick of time to rescue the Mayor's son, and Anna is in his way. “They told me I would just have to stand there...” She's left permanently disabled by the impact, in constant pain, suffering PTSD, unable to work for months, and (of course) with her contract terminated.
Initially to distract herself, she begins to tabulate the human cost of superhero activity. Her calculations are based on the real-world DALY (Disability-Adjusted Life Years) measure used to evaluate the impact of natural disasters, and she quickly discovers that Supercollider is, all by himself, as destructive as a major earthquake.Her calculations, and the blog she writes, bring her to the attention of supervillain Leviathan, who offers her paid employment. Leviathan is ... extremely focussed on Supercollider, but Anna finds herself targeted by the superhero too -- not because of her new employer, but because Supercollider recognises that, in injuring Anna, he has created another potential villain who wishes him harm.
Hench is a thoughtful and painstaking examination of the ecology and sociology of superheroes and supervillains. The worldbuilding is excellent: there's the Superhero Municipal Insurance (Anna is not eligible, as the police think she must have been 'confused' about how she was injured); the Bureau of Superheroic Affairs, who routinely test all pubescent children for latent powers; the celebrity cults around particular heroes, and the fake relationships they present to the public; care homes for ageing heroes, dangerously out of control due to dementia; clandestine human experimentation ... The novel is also (after a somewhat sluggish start) an immensely engaging and entertaining read, though there is some truly nauseating body horror in the climactic scenes as Walschots examines what it means to be indestructible.
Hench foregrounds several extremely competent female characters, who have conversations that aren't about men (and, in one case, that are about men and the emotional labour of 'taking care of their feelings'). Anna, our protagonist, isn't always likeable, and she's not much given to self-examination: her first-person narrative is full of elisions and misinterpretations. There are a couple of plot points where the reader will be several steps ahead of her, and other points where she displays an inability to assume responsibility, likely a protective mechanism developed in all those soul-destroying temp jobs. There are, perhaps, too many incomplete plot threads: Anna's friendship with June (who took her in after the Supercollider collision), Anna's various crushes (usually on women), the friends-to-nemeses relationship between Leviathan and Supercollider, the superheroes' soap-opera interactions (reminiscent of Watchmen more than the MCU) ...
It's tempting to map the characters -- at least the superheroes -- to familiar protagonists from Marvel, DC, et cetera. I caution against this, not only because it amps up the emotional impact of some of the nastier scenes but also because I don't think it's as simple as that. Walschots is patently familiar with comics canon and I suspect she had a great deal of fun developing her own versions of assorted tropes.
I enjoyed this immensely: it's one of the first books for a while that I've wanted to reread immediately after finishing it. I very much hope Walschots will write more in this universe.
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