Hench

“This book is fast, furious, compelling, and angry as hell." - Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author The Boys meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation in this smart, imaginative, and evocative urban fantasy novel of love, betrayal, revenge, and redemption, told with razor-sharp wit and affection, in which a young woman discovers the greatest superpower—for good or ill—is a properly executed spreadsheet. Anna does boring things for terrible people because even supervillains need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn't glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy? As a temp, she's just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero” leaves her badly injured. And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she's the lucky one. So, of course, then she gets laid off. With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, this unlikely antihero discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks. Because the key to everything in this dark comedy is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing. And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance. It's not too long before she's employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world. A sharp, witty, modern debut, this subversive superhero story Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

Natalie Zina Walschots is a writer and game designer whose work includes LARP scripts, heavy metal music journalism, video game lore, weirder things classified as “interactive experiences,” and, unfortunately, experimental poetry. Her first novel, Hench, was a finalist on the 2021 season of Canada Reads and nominated for a Locus Award for Best First Novel. She plays a lot of RPGs, participates in a lot of emotionally harrowing LARPs, watches a lot of horror movies, and reads a lot of speculative fiction. She lives in Nova Scotia with her partner and four cats.