VILLAIN

Paradigms shift in the wake of a supposedly indestructible superhero’s defeat in this sequel to Hench (2020).

Once a low-level henchwoman for hire, Anna is now a full-fledged villain called Auditor who serves at the right hand of Leviathan, the world’s biggest supervillain. Auditor’s superpower is weaponizing data to ruin superheroes’ lives—everything from publicizing secret social media accounts and marital infidelities to exploiting childhood traumas and deep-seated insecurities. Now that the world’s greatest superhero, Supercollider, has been vanquished—secretly twisted into a living, breathing “flesh dumpling” by his scorned ex-girlfriend and former superhero partner, Quantum Entanglement—Auditor yearns to use her talents to take down the Department of Superheroic Affairs, aka “the Draft.” The organization is responsible for everything involving superheroes, including recruiting, training, and funding them, as well as creating compelling backstories for them, and Auditor considers it to be the only remaining enemy worthy of her and Leviathan’s attention. But though Auditor has no shortage of diabolical plans, Leviathan refuses to greenlight any of them, as he’s too distraught over the defeat of his nemesis by someone else to even leave his lair. Then Supercollider perishes during doctors’ attempts to “untangle himself from himself,” and the Draft falsely blames Leviathan for his murder. On the plus side, burnishing Leviathan’s infamy snaps him out of his funk; it also paints giant targets on the backs of those working for him, few of whom are “conveniently invulnerable” like their boss. Further worrying Auditor is evidence of new leadership in the Draft—a marketing executive whose flair for manipulation rivals her own. Walschots’ plotting dazzles and devastates, with rollicking, high-stakes action punctuating scenes of unflinching introspection and fraught interpersonal drama. Via Auditor’s snarky yet vulnerable first-person narration and keenly rendered characters, Walschots sensitively explores issues of agency, self-identity, morality, and grief while entertaining readers from the jump.

Glittering and gut-wrenching.