The Regional Office is Under Attack!

Gonzales explodes the narrative and reassembles the shards into a time jumping story that switches from the expletive laden thoughts of a female operative to the dry conjecture of a research paper. It's a pop culture laden romp through the last days of a superhero initiative with nods to Die Hard, Minority Report, Karate Kid with a healthy dose of the X-Men, Morning Glories or the Umbrella Academy.

Given Gonzales' literary history it gets the literary fiction label with a side of genre instead of being placed firmly in YA where it could comfortably sit - less the grisly and funny interlude focused on the office drones that splits the book. And while I loved the action beats throughout I thought Daniel O'Malley's The Rook was the better version of this book.

My first instinct is to compare this book to Peter Clines' [b:Ex-Heroes 16479439 Ex-Heroes (Ex-Heroes, #1) Peter Clines https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360646185s/16479439.jpg 10753679]. Both books deal with superheroes, and both books use an alternating Then/Now structure to show both the actions of the superheroes and how they became superheroes. But where Clines' novel is an escapist action romp, Gonzales takes the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (when they go out and find the other potential slayers) and sets it inside a corporate bureaucracy. The action is too dry for my taste, and the homicidal robot arm, while clearly the best part of the book, isn't given nearly the attention it deserves.