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A review by nataliya_x
The Henchmen's Book Club by Danny King
2.0
So, to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite bookish friends carol., I went a little hench-curious after a recent [b:Hench|49867430|Hench|Natalie Zina Walschots|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1594616305l/49867430._SY75_.jpg|73236179] buddy read and craved more henchdom adventures. This seemed like a natural choice — henchmen and book club. I mean, what can possibly go wrong?
Ahem, yeah. About that.
There’s a part of me that genuinely loved this book. I mean, the first rule of the henchmen book club is that you don’t talk about the henchmen book club, but hey — who wouldn’t want to discuss a few tomes in between henching for Bond-esque supervillains? Especially if your job description, in addition to being cannon fodder for Bond- and Rambo-esque heroes entails guarding vending machines in supervillains’ hideouts? You need something to spice it up, even if it ends up being [b:The Time Traveler's Wife|18619684|The Time Traveler's Wife|Audrey Niffenegger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1380660571l/18619684._SX50_.jpg|2153746] (despite the “no chick-lit” rule of this hyper-macho establishment).
Mark Jones works for the Agency, a secret powerful outfit that provides all those supervillains with all those minions they need. The pay is supposedly good, and they will get you out and patch you up when another supervillain plot goes bust, and the truth is — they made you an offer you couldn’t refuse — so the henchmen go on from one job to another, with a few of them having secretly bonded over their love for books.
It starts as a very episodic story, almost resembling a long-running serial of sorts, but eventually acquires a plot and some cohesiveness. It’s funny, it’s full of action, and on a superficial level quite succeeded in keeping me entertained.
But. But but but. But.
But there’s another part of me very much annoyed with the blatant dudebro humor here mixed with the lack of proper editing.
# Lack of editing. Both as in proofreading (dude, commas exist for a reason; I cannot believe nobody pointed out any disregard for the basic punctuation rules to the author*) and culling the unnecessary stuff (too much is crammed into every chapter, with every move overdescribed to the point where there’s no reason to use imagination — and resulting in book bloating).
# Immature dudebro humor. It leads to quite uncomfortable results. Things are put down a few times as being “gay”, humor is extracted by specifying that something was or seemed homoerotic, etc. Same with a few locker-room-talk-like instances of sexist humor. Had this been published in the 90s, I’d given it a pass. But for something published in 2011 it’s crossing the line into uncomfortable and dated faux-pas. This should have been culled by any editor and would have made this much less awkwardly cringeworthy.
——————
That said, the characters were done quite alright. Mark was overall entertaining, and the parodies of British and American special agents were spot-on, immediately bringing to mind all the silly movie tropes that gave rise to them. Hats off to Jack Tempest and Rip Dunbar portrayals, nicely done.
Altogether I’d give it 2.5 stars — but as GR (same as henchmen book club) does not allow half-stars, I have to round — and I’m rounding down, both for juvenile humor and the criminally missing commas.
——————
Buddy read with carol, Stephen and jade.
Ahem, yeah. About that.
There’s a part of me that genuinely loved this book. I mean, the first rule of the henchmen book club is that you don’t talk about the henchmen book club, but hey — who wouldn’t want to discuss a few tomes in between henching for Bond-esque supervillains? Especially if your job description, in addition to being cannon fodder for Bond- and Rambo-esque heroes entails guarding vending machines in supervillains’ hideouts? You need something to spice it up, even if it ends up being [b:The Time Traveler's Wife|18619684|The Time Traveler's Wife|Audrey Niffenegger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1380660571l/18619684._SX50_.jpg|2153746] (despite the “no chick-lit” rule of this hyper-macho establishment).
“Saluting people you didn’t need to salute is just one short step away from saluting flags. And the day I started doing that was the day I stopped trying to blow up large chunks of the world. Or at least, stopped guarding the corridors and vending machines of people who sought to do that sort of thing. Not for me. No sir. I had bills to pay.”
Mark Jones works for the Agency, a secret powerful outfit that provides all those supervillains with all those minions they need. The pay is supposedly good, and they will get you out and patch you up when another supervillain plot goes bust, and the truth is — they made you an offer you couldn’t refuse — so the henchmen go on from one job to another, with a few of them having secretly bonded over their love for books.
“Our books were like windows out onto the world. Of course, they had been before we’d started book club, when they’d been read individually, but when you read books as a group, the worlds and stories that are held within their pages come to life even more because they become part of a collective consciousness. The experiences become richer and that window out onto the world opens just a little wider.”
It starts as a very episodic story, almost resembling a long-running serial of sorts, but eventually acquires a plot and some cohesiveness. It’s funny, it’s full of action, and on a superficial level quite succeeded in keeping me entertained.
“Expendable. That’s how me, Mr Smith, Savimbi and Petrofsky were seen more often than not. Mere assets, to be rolled out and used like so much toilet paper. And when we’d done what we’d been asked to do, and our chiefs had the moon on a stick, our rewards were invariably the flushing of the chain.”
But. But but but. But.
But there’s another part of me very much annoyed with the blatant dudebro humor here mixed with the lack of proper editing.
# Lack of editing. Both as in proofreading (dude, commas exist for a reason; I cannot believe nobody pointed out any disregard for the basic punctuation rules to the author*) and culling the unnecessary stuff (too much is crammed into every chapter, with every move overdescribed to the point where there’s no reason to use imagination — and resulting in book bloating).
* Commas can save lives.
# Immature dudebro humor. It leads to quite uncomfortable results. Things are put down a few times as being “gay”, humor is extracted by specifying that something was or seemed homoerotic, etc. Same with a few locker-room-talk-like instances of sexist humor. Had this been published in the 90s, I’d given it a pass. But for something published in 2011 it’s crossing the line into uncomfortable and dated faux-pas. This should have been culled by any editor and would have made this much less awkwardly cringeworthy.
——————
That said, the characters were done quite alright. Mark was overall entertaining, and the parodies of British and American special agents were spot-on, immediately bringing to mind all the silly movie tropes that gave rise to them. Hats off to Jack Tempest and Rip Dunbar portrayals, nicely done.
“We don’t say goon any more,” I told him.
“No?”
“No. It’s like calling your cleaner your skivvy or your PA your lackey. It’s kind of derogatory.”
Altogether I’d give it 2.5 stars — but as GR (same as henchmen book club) does not allow half-stars, I have to round — and I’m rounding down, both for juvenile humor and the criminally missing commas.
——————
Buddy read with carol, Stephen and jade.