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 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.
Includes a bonus story for the paperback.
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.

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.