The long-awaited sequel to Natalie Zina Walschots’ Hench is an extremely weird follow-up titled Villain that goes in directions I absolutely was not expecting. This itself is not surprising, given how refreshing and weird Hench was when it burst onto the scene, so it remains doubly impressive that Walschots was able to still surprise me.
For those unfamiliar, I highly recommend you start with our review of Hench here. However, long story short, this series is about a woman named Anna whose life was ruined by the casual indifference of a superhero, resulting in her taking up henchman work with a villain named Leviathan as a logistical analyst. The series offers some brilliant deconstruction of the superhero genre, but it very much eschews the gritty realism that has taken hold of this genre of satire recently in favor of a much more flavorful abstractism, themed around office romance/comedy.
Hench was all about Anna slowly leaving the side of good and coming to terms with joining the villains, and realizing that she was quite good at the work. Villain is both the natural extension of this, as Anna begins to become a powerhouse in her own right in the superhero world, and a super weird pivot into the exploration of difficult romances that I think worked extremely well. Anna has fully embraced her role as the Auditor, ready to do anything to take down the Draft (Heroes) and elevate her boss Leviathan in power. She’s less sure about how to navigate the sexual relationship she and Leviathan are embarking on.
While Villain still contains all the stuff that made Hench good, the new themes surround complicated, abusive relationships. Leviathan, in much the way he views the world, seeks to control Anna as a part of himself–subsuming her identity as a subroutine of how he controls his operation. I expected Walschots to either depict this romantic tension as wholly bad or to lean in from a debauchery angle and let readers lose themselves in it. Instead, Walschots finds a very strange middle space where the problems are acknowledged, and the thematic objective seems to be compromise in the truest sense. Two months post-reading Villain, and I still haven’t made my mind up on how I feel about this theme, but I have been thinking about it constantly, and it was certainly interesting. Most of all, it makes me want to read more of the story to see where all of this is going.
What once felt like a very strong standalone has now been transformed into a series that begs for more entries. On top of Anna and Leviathan needing more exploration, I love the new established antagonist: Draft Chief Marketing Officer, Mom. He is such a perfect encapsulation of what sucks about office culture, and I want to see him thrown into a pit of Schaedenfreud. All in all, one of the most complicated and evocative reads of 2026 so far, and something I can’t wait to discuss with anyone else who finishes it and has thoughts.
Rating: Villain – 8.5/10
-Andrew
An ARC of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.
