Couverture / Jaquette

The BoysmeetsStarter VillainandAssistant to the Villainin Natalie Zina Walschotss electrifying, sharp, violent, and hilarious sequel to the highly acclaimed novel,Hench,in which the Auditor must confront the near-impossible in order to right the many wrongs in the superhuman industryor cause more of them. Shes not picky.

Anna, better known to superheroes as the Auditor, has carved out a name for herself. Any hero unlucky enough to cross her path knows her potential and powers. Surely, success should taste sweet: she has an incredible job with lots of perks, and her boss willliterallyannihilate anyone who crosses her, and her greatest enemy, the former hero Supercollider, has been utterly defeated and literally ground to a pulp.

But Anna still has her sights set on a greater work: destroying the Draft, the organization that makes, trains, and manages the worlds most powerful superheroes. These heroes have shown time and time again that they do more harm than good, and now is the time to stop the damage at its source.

Yet all is not well for the Auditor and her fellow evildoers. Her employer, Leviathanthe worlds most feared supervillainis not coping well with Supercolliders defeat at someone elses hands. Moreover, her unlikely ally and unexpected friend, Quantum Entanglement, has vanished without a trace, leaving Anna to examine all the ways they deceived each other. Tension and uncertainty fill the air, and fear that this moment of triumph is about to crumble looms over all of them.

Anna soon finds herself facing down an opponent unlike any shes taken on beforenot another superhero, but someone like hersomeone much more dangerous: the Drafts Chief Marketing Officer. This isnt a test of physical prowess, but ideas, and as the fight spirals deeper and deeper, with new foes popping up every dayshell need more than just her superpowerdata researchto keep ascending through the supervillain ranks.

Its guerrilla ad warfare, and the Auditor might have finally met her match.

Note biographique

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 Nordic LARPs, watches a lot of horror movies, and reads a lot of speculative fiction. She lives in Nova Scotia with her partner and two cats. 

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