“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 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 criminals 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, she 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 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, 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.
Ale
4/4/2024
In a world of supervillains and superheroes, Anna is a powerless data engineer. Since her job is so mechanical, and boring, it doesn't make a difference if she's hired by a prestigious conglomerate or a supervillain. Until her harmless temporary job as a hench to a minor villain leaves her in the midts of the strongest superheroe Super Collider. She's left jobless and immobile for the next six months at least. Anna has nothing but anger and time to check the numbers. Her new endeavour lands her a new job with the strongest and most feared supervillain of them all, Leaviathan. He promises to enhance her abilities, and get rid of her greatest enemy, their greatest enemy, Super Collider. This is my villain origin story. Honestly, Anna is so relatable, incredibly intelligent, practically a genius, and hopelessly in love with Leviathan. I loved the depiction of a descent into justified villainy and revenge. There are no good guys in this world, and the double morale in this book is practically what happens IRL. I need to keep an eye on Quantum, I fear for what she may do in the next book. But especially, I need my babies to get together. Their actions speak louder than words, but I need some more intimacy between them.
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