Scan barcode
A review by morag
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
This book has a lot of potential, but it reads like a first draft that needs another round of heavy editing. And I'm not talking about typos or grammatical structure, but in-depth restructuring of the pacing, plot, and characters.
Now, I love the idea of this novel. In an era dominated by superhero media (mostly movies, I'll grant you), anything that promises to subvert expectations of the genre is on my radar. This novel seemed to promise it all. In a world where superheroism and villainy are commonplace, a henchman just in it for the cash becomes radicalized when the world's top hero leaves her permanently disabled after going overboard in a rescue mission. She quickly falls in the world's top villain and begins a campaign to bring the top heroes to their knees.
This is so close to living up to all that hype. The villain is interesting and threatening, the tone is a decent mix of grim and gallows humor, and the stakes get higher and higher as the novel progresses. Her arguments against the brutality of heroes and the exploration of why people turn to villainy were incredibly interesting to read. It really dives into the "who's the real villain" discussion. In those aspects, it was exactly what I was looking for.
However. This book has a lot of issues that keep it from being great. The major one is the way the villains are framed. Now, I know I'm going to sound like a hypocrite for saying this, but the book is way too lenient on the villains. I know the whole point is to humanize them, but there's a difference between humanization and condoning something. Rather than acknowledging the full damage the villains cause and arguing that brutality still isn't acceptable, the book tries to downplay the effect of the villains and engage in a healthy dose of whataboutism. Sure, the villains might rob, assault, kidnap, and murder people, but is it really that bad? What about what the heroes do to them?
That's not an intelligent deconstruction of the genre. It shows an unwillingness to fully face the complexity of the issue it's trying to discuss. I wanted to see a deeply flawed protagonist explore what ethics and morality are in a society that draws such a hard line between good and evil. Instead, the book tries to flatten everything by arguing that maybe good is actually evil and evil is actually just a reaction to evil acting good. At several points, it seems to want to remove any responsibility the villains have for their own actions and place it solely on the heroes. Yes, they're either actively tormenting people or aiding and abetting that torment, but can you blame them after what the heroes have done?
Obviously many people are pushed into criminal actions because of how unfairly structured society is, but this is where you're supposed to dive deep into those ideas and explore them in all their ugliness. THAT is where the story is. Instead, we get minimization and blame-shifting. It's immature, shallow, and frustrating.
That shallow approach to structural issues affects how race is handled in the book as well. In the beginning of the book, the white protagonist and her black best friend are both temp henchmen for low-level villains. After the accident, they start living together. When the protag starts a popular blog criticizing heroes, her friend grows anxious about the attention it could call to them, and their relationship grows strained. Jump forward, and after the protagonist has become a high-level villain, her friend completely cuts off contact and publicly disowns her. In the book, this is explained as the friend just not being able to handle real villainy. Basically, she's weak. She's not as hardcore or passionate as the protagonist.
However, it completely fails to acknowledge how race may play into it. Once again, the protagonist is white and her friend is black. In the real world, it's common knowledge that law enforcement is structurally racist and always treats black people with more violence than white people. So, realistically, isn't her friend just being more conscious of how the law will affect her? She was a low-level villain, a temp criminal. That was a relatively safe gray area to be in. Now suddenly her white friend, who was just involved in a televised crime featuring a top hero, moves into her apartment and starts posting extremely controversial and inflammatory criticisms of heroes. Then, after she starts working for what is essentially the FBI's #1 Most Wanted villain in a grand plot to destroy the top heroes in the world, she tries to reconnect. Yes, the protagonist is doing all the dirty work, but when heroes arrive, do you think the friend will be spared? Do you think the extremely anti-black power structure in charge of bringing the hammer down on villainy is going to play nice with the black friend of a rising supervillain, no matter how distant they are? It could just as easily be that her friend, even if she does support the protagonist's ideas, doesn't want to be collateral for some reckless, power-hungry white woman.
I'm not trying to spin this as the whole truth, of course, but it's insane to me that the book doesn't even mention this as a possibility. This book, which touches on other social issues like homophobia and sexism, does not acknowledge the power dynamics of race between the protagonist and her best friend, despite focusing so heavily on the ethics of law and crime. Fuck off.
As a final note, this book needs a sequel, or it is going to be one of the most incomplete books I've read in recent memory. Walschots dangles at least two major plot threads over the reader at the end of the novel, ones that directly affect the protagonist and the world she's created. There are fundamental elements of the world-building barely touched on, a huge revelation about hero society that we never see the consequences of, a potentially life-changing power the protagonist has not unearthed. At the end, she strongly suggests those questions will be answered...later. This could not be a more obvious set-up for a second book. It may as well have To Be Continued stamped on the final page. It looks like she sold the rights to a sequel last year, so we'll see how that goes.
Overall, this is a book with a lot of big ideas that should've gone through a few more drafts before ever making it to shelves. I'll be there when the sequel comes out to see if this series' potential is ever reached.
Now, I love the idea of this novel. In an era dominated by superhero media (mostly movies, I'll grant you), anything that promises to subvert expectations of the genre is on my radar. This novel seemed to promise it all. In a world where superheroism and villainy are commonplace, a henchman just in it for the cash becomes radicalized when the world's top hero leaves her permanently disabled after going overboard in a rescue mission. She quickly falls in the world's top villain and begins a campaign to bring the top heroes to their knees.
This is so close to living up to all that hype. The villain is interesting and threatening, the tone is a decent mix of grim and gallows humor, and the stakes get higher and higher as the novel progresses. Her arguments against the brutality of heroes and the exploration of why people turn to villainy were incredibly interesting to read. It really dives into the "who's the real villain" discussion. In those aspects, it was exactly what I was looking for.
However. This book has a lot of issues that keep it from being great. The major one is the way the villains are framed. Now, I know I'm going to sound like a hypocrite for saying this, but the book is way too lenient on the villains. I know the whole point is to humanize them, but there's a difference between humanization and condoning something. Rather than acknowledging the full damage the villains cause and arguing that brutality still isn't acceptable, the book tries to downplay the effect of the villains and engage in a healthy dose of whataboutism. Sure, the villains might rob, assault, kidnap, and murder people, but is it really that bad? What about what the heroes do to them?
That's not an intelligent deconstruction of the genre. It shows an unwillingness to fully face the complexity of the issue it's trying to discuss. I wanted to see a deeply flawed protagonist explore what ethics and morality are in a society that draws such a hard line between good and evil. Instead, the book tries to flatten everything by arguing that maybe good is actually evil and evil is actually just a reaction to evil acting good. At several points, it seems to want to remove any responsibility the villains have for their own actions and place it solely on the heroes. Yes, they're either actively tormenting people or aiding and abetting that torment, but can you blame them after what the heroes have done?
Obviously many people are pushed into criminal actions because of how unfairly structured society is, but this is where you're supposed to dive deep into those ideas and explore them in all their ugliness. THAT is where the story is. Instead, we get minimization and blame-shifting. It's immature, shallow, and frustrating.
That shallow approach to structural issues affects how race is handled in the book as well. In the beginning of the book, the white protagonist and her black best friend are both temp henchmen for low-level villains. After the accident, they start living together. When the protag starts a popular blog criticizing heroes, her friend grows anxious about the attention it could call to them, and their relationship grows strained. Jump forward, and after the protagonist has become a high-level villain, her friend completely cuts off contact and publicly disowns her. In the book, this is explained as the friend just not being able to handle real villainy. Basically, she's weak. She's not as hardcore or passionate as the protagonist.
However, it completely fails to acknowledge how race may play into it. Once again, the protagonist is white and her friend is black. In the real world, it's common knowledge that law enforcement is structurally racist and always treats black people with more violence than white people. So, realistically, isn't her friend just being more conscious of how the law will affect her? She was a low-level villain, a temp criminal. That was a relatively safe gray area to be in. Now suddenly her white friend, who was just involved in a televised crime featuring a top hero, moves into her apartment and starts posting extremely controversial and inflammatory criticisms of heroes. Then, after she starts working for what is essentially the FBI's #1 Most Wanted villain in a grand plot to destroy the top heroes in the world, she tries to reconnect. Yes, the protagonist is doing all the dirty work, but when heroes arrive, do you think the friend will be spared? Do you think the extremely anti-black power structure in charge of bringing the hammer down on villainy is going to play nice with the black friend of a rising supervillain, no matter how distant they are? It could just as easily be that her friend, even if she does support the protagonist's ideas, doesn't want to be collateral for some reckless, power-hungry white woman.
I'm not trying to spin this as the whole truth, of course, but it's insane to me that the book doesn't even mention this as a possibility. This book, which touches on other social issues like homophobia and sexism, does not acknowledge the power dynamics of race between the protagonist and her best friend, despite focusing so heavily on the ethics of law and crime. Fuck off.
As a final note, this book needs a sequel, or it is going to be one of the most incomplete books I've read in recent memory. Walschots dangles at least two major plot threads over the reader at the end of the novel, ones that directly affect the protagonist and the world she's created. There are fundamental elements of the world-building barely touched on, a huge revelation about hero society that we never see the consequences of, a potentially life-changing power the protagonist has not unearthed. At the end, she strongly suggests those questions will be answered...later. This could not be a more obvious set-up for a second book. It may as well have To Be Continued stamped on the final page. It looks like she sold the rights to a sequel last year, so we'll see how that goes.
Overall, this is a book with a lot of big ideas that should've gone through a few more drafts before ever making it to shelves. I'll be there when the sequel comes out to see if this series' potential is ever reached.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Police brutality, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Torture