Hench: A Novel

You know a book is good when you put it down after finishing a four-hour marathon read from beginning to end and simply go, “Wow.” I have always loved stories about imperfect people, especially in a superhero context. Stories that explore the grey areas of personality and the fact that very rarely is someone all good or all bad. Very rarely does a villain not have some kind of backstory that explains why they’ve made the choices they have. Hench is just one such exploration, and Walschots does it masterfully. I hate to compare Hench to other things, but if I had to go with modern literary sales pitches, I’d say it is Megamind meets The Boys. Atmospherically, the book is kind of dark, without straying into grimdark. It’s not a warm-fuzzies kind of story. But to balance the darkness, Walschots weaves in wry humor and thoughtfulness that is so kind it’s almost painful, knowing that that kind of kindness might just be the most fantastical element of the whole story. The characters all feel like real people, the kind of people who end up in places they maybe didn’t expect, but one way or another here they are because bills have got to be paid. Anna is very relatable, and I can really sympathize with parts of her story. But what I really loved, was that it’s practically competence porn. Shows like The West Wing are enjoyable to me because I love witnessing excellent people do excellent things. There’s nothing more satisfying than a job well done. And Anna is very competent.…

A great world of superheroes and supervillains with the story line around - a henchman. Overall, great action sequences, and good dialogs. The fight scenes seemed to jump around a lot and there is some missed opportunity in the plot there. I would have enjoyed it more without irrelevant strands of lesbian/gay relationship; this was a missed opportunity to add depth to the characters and story, but the way they were written added nothing to the plot and could have simply been left out. Overall; a very decent first novel and mostly entertaining and fun read.