A review by iviarelle
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

If you ever watched a superhero movie and asked yourself, "what kind of society would uphold all this accidental damage as acceptable", this may be a book for you! There's a lot of difficult content here (I'm glad I have aphantasia because some of those sequences have intense descriptions of injuries and worse) but this is such a great examination of hero culture and who it really benefits. No villain-focused story I've read before has ever really gone this far to say, hey though, nobody deserves the damage these heroes inflict. Which is true! A lot of "heroes" inflict a hell of a lot of collateral damage in their attempts to save the target they latch on to, even in the real world, and it's kinda hecked up.

At any rate, I really, really enjoyed this one. If you aren't a fan of open endings, this may annoy you more than satisfy, but if you don't mind or enjoy some loose threads, and anything about the above paragraph intrigues you, it's worth a shot.
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