Hench

[seekingferret]

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

I found this book mostly kind of morally bewildering. I've seen a lot of online reviews call it morally grey, but if it is, it's not morally grey the way I normally understand it- tension between conflicting moral principles, struggle between doing the right thing and inaction, ambiguity about who the bad guy is.

In this book, there are Villains, who do things like build death rays and mind control devices and use them to threaten cities. They are opposed by Heroes, who do anything to stop Villains, even if it results in collateral damage. There are civilians, who just try to go about their lives. And then there are Henches, who work for Villains in mundane capacities like driving them around or fixing their internet or maintaining their payroll.

And I dunno, it strikes me that Henches are just Villains? Maybe I'm too black and white to understand Walschots's version of moral grey, but I personally think if you're working for a guy using a death ray to threaten civilians you're also a bad guy. You're responsible for some part of the pain the Villain is inflicting.

That made it hard for me to find a pov into the novel, because Anna's certainty that she is right and superheroes cause more harm than they mitigate is the book's apparent moral center and I couldn't accept it even as some sort of antiheroic idea, and trying to read the novel thinking the book disagrees with Anna and is interested in watching her descent into amoral supervillainy structurally doesn't work. It didn't help that Walschots was allergic to any kind of long form infodumping, I never could quite make sense of any of the backstory involving all the central superheroes and villains, and I definitely never found the worldbuilding keystone that would underpin a setting where Anna had a point.

Comments

[conuly]

I think the morally gray part is that the "Heroes" and the system set up to support them are also bad. Not that the villains might reasonably be called good.

[seekingferret]

That's not morally grey, that's just nihilism.

[ambyr]

This is interesting! I had less trouble with the book than you, because while I agree it's lacking a functional moral center that's not something I need in literature, I guess? I don't think Anna has a point, but I think Anna thinks she has a point, and how people self-justify is always interesting to me. (I do also agree that Walschots seems to think Anna has a point, but that's just more levels of self-justification for me to consider, heh.)

[seekingferret]

Yeah, to me the combination of Anna thinks she has a point and Walschots thinks she has a point is the disorienting combo.

[ghost_lingering]

I haven't read it, but the description you give of Henches sounds almost like an allegory for how people irl might work for, say, corporations or organizations that inflict measurable harm on society & what the employees' degree of culpability in that harm might be. But based on the rest of the post I suspect that is not where the book is taking things.

(FWIW: I am mildly interested in superhero stories that critique the collateral damage that heroes cause, but it also sounds like this book wouldn't scratch that itch in a satisfying way for me.)

[seekingferret]

Some version of that allegory is how the book starts off, but it's not where it goes. The more you learn about the world this all takes place in, the less that allegory makes sense.

Speaking of superhero collateral damage, I've been hunting for a vid dealing with property damage or collateral damage in the MCU- can you think of any?

[ghost_lingering]

That's a shame wrt the book because it's an allegory I would find interesting to read a story about!

Re: MCU vids ... I definitely can't think of anything dealing specifically with property damage off the top of my head. I can think of things that criticize superhero-ing, but in a way that is more about criticizing the politics or the implications rather than the physical damage caused; or if there is collateral damage it's implied or more ephemeral than the straight up destruction of buildings, etc. (I'm thinking of things like Hey Ho, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utYjqjPjzT0 Like I could argue that Hey Ho is about how children become collateral damage in political & military propaganda, but that's not what I tend to immediately think of when I hear "collateral damage")

[primeideal]

The Narrative: if you really cared about the greatest good for the greatest number, you'd understand that extorting millions of dollars out of people and chopping off children's fingers is better than the alternative, uwu (:
Me: sure, sounds good, where can I go to get my finger chopped off?? You know, for the Cause
The Narrative: lol just kidding you can't actually do that
Me: ...what...am I doing here then

[seekingferret]

Yeah, it's bullshit for sure. She does cost-benefit analysis on Supercollider again and again but never does cost-benefit analysis on Leviathan or Electric Eel. And never does cost-benefit analysis on cost-benefit analysis.

[lannamichaels]

And I dunno, it strikes me that Henches are just Villains? Maybe I'm too black and white to understand Walschots's version of moral grey, but I personally think if you're working for a guy using a death ray to threaten civilians you're also a bad guy. You're responsible for some part of the pain the Villain is inflicting.

Yeah this was one of my problems. I DNFed it, idek, 20-30 pages in?

[bironic]

>>I found this book mostly kind of morally bewildering.

THANK YOU. YES. I found it incoherent and haven't seen any other reviews that agree or address that in a satisfying way.

[seekingferret]

As you can see from my comments section, we're not the only ones.