Hench Audiobook By Natalie Zina Walschots cover art

Hench

A Novel

Preview

Get this deal Try for $0.00
Offer ends April 30, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Hench

By: Natalie Zina Walschots
Narrated by: Alex McKenna
Get this deal Try for $0.00

$14.95/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends April 30, 2025 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $26.99

Buy for $26.99

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

“This book is fast, furious, compelling, and angry as hell." (Seanan McGuire, New York Times best-selling 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.

©2019 Natalie Zina Walschots (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Adventure Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction Superhero Witty Funny Scary Feel-Good

What listeners say about Hench

Highly rated for:

Unique Story Compelling Characters Intriguing Perspective Creative Worldbuilding Engaging Plotline
Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    713
  • 4 Stars
    318
  • 3 Stars
    106
  • 2 Stars
    38
  • 1 Stars
    27
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    646
  • 4 Stars
    255
  • 3 Stars
    93
  • 2 Stars
    29
  • 1 Stars
    18
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    625
  • 4 Stars
    268
  • 3 Stars
    94
  • 2 Stars
    26
  • 1 Stars
    24

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Three words: Lobotomized Super Villains!

You know somethings gone wrong with the world when the superheroes are lobotomizing super villains...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Long Live the Queen

Hench is an absolute gem! The best book I have read (ahem, listened to) in quite some time. Five stars all the way around. Excellent narration, brilliant storytelling, unpredictable plotline, and entirely refreshing in multiple regards. I won't deign to analyze the plot for you or rave senselessly about its many novel approaches to a saturated genre; however, I will say that what Walschots has accomplished, here, is nothing short of invigorating--a real boon to the maddening dirth of engrossing fantasy and sci-fi currently available. Adding to this excitement is the knowledge that this is her first novel. I cannot wait to see what comes next.

(Edit) Note: I must say, personally, I found nothing at all off-putting in regards to the narrator. Listen to the sample, first, if you are concerned, but after having listened, myself, to well over 600 books, I speak from some amount of experience when I say that we could do far, far worse than listening to Alex McKenna read superhero fantasies to us.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Best of Superheroes

I love it. If I read comics, this would have been a holy grail of it. Hillarious, cynical, but also masterful in working with cliches. Performace was the most suiting with the book. I want to see it become a legend.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Very good!

Kept me interested throughout! Eagerly awaiting for the next installment! I really loved this book!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant, tense, inventive, amazing!

I loved it! Perfectly paced. Dynamic, fully developed characters that are consistent with themselves. A well thought out and planned world. Excellent and snappy dialog. A truly grand plot. The narration was great. McKenna did an excellent job portraying the characters and narrating plot. Her voice is expressive and enjoyable.

I want MORE!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

great story

excellent narration. love the originality in the premise as well as the characters. great origin story.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Real fun read

This was a great new take on the hero sagas. I thought the narrator was excellent. It is a bit of a cliff hanger

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Entertaining and thought provoking.

This is a book I will be thinking about you years to come. The mixture of good and evil among all parties feels realistic even though the book has superheroes and supervillains. I recommend this to anyone not looking for a typical mindless action, but for someone who wants to explore the consequences of the actions on the non heroes.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great story, narration was a little distracting

I thoroughly enjoyed the story. I do agree with a few of the reviews that are already on here about the narration taking away from the story. The voice actor had a very soothing voice however when it came to the dialogue, which there was a lot of in the story, a lot of the characters had a very raspy and almost cartoony voice. I found that it was not only distracting but also almost hard to understand and even a little hard to listen to.
The story itself I thoroughly enjoyed. I will absolutely be reading it again but I will probably be reading the book next time. There were gaps with some of the character building which I felt were not detrimental to the story however did cause it to drag on in some parts. With that being said it was very well written. I experienced the full range of emotions while reading this book. I found it to be very exciting, witty, and even a little dark in some parts.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

interesting plot- just not for me

I love how interesting this book was and how realistic the main character but I hated how it ended. so lonely and sad! I'm lame, but I love books with happy tied-up-in-a-bow endings and this just wasn't that type of book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!