The Regional Office is Under Attack!

Somewhere in New York, in an underground lair beneath a highly exclusive travel agency that serves as its cover, there is an organization known as The Regional Office. Most of the travel agency employees don't know it's there, and certainly don't know what their employer's real business is.

But if you happen to make your way from the Morrison World Travel Concern to a particular elevator, you will be taken nearly a mile underground, and when the elevator doors open, you will see written on the wall:

"The Regional Office: uniquely positioned to Empower and Strengthen otherwise troubled or at-risk Young Women to act as a Barrier of last resort between the survival of the Planet and the amassing Forces of Darkness that Threaten, at nearly show more every turn, to Destroy It."

Yes, it's another top-secret organization of secret agents, all of them female, devoted to saving the world from an array of horrifying (and, it is suggested, probably supernatural) threats. And it is at the Regional Office that Gonzales begins his story, very much in medias res, as a team of agents -- again, all women -- prepares to attack and (they hope) to destroy the Office.

It's a structurally complicated book. We begin with two central characters. Rose is heading the assault team, and Sarah is forced to rally her co-workers in defense, a task for which she is only partially prepared. Not only do we alternate between those two points of view, but we are also alternating for each of them between the day of the attack and flashback chapters which fill in their backstories.

And the first third of the book, when the focus is on the attack itself, is terrific stuff. Rose and Sarah are vivid characters, and Gonzales writes action scenes that mix thrills and comedy in unexpected ways. An "interlude" chapter called "The Hostage Situation" is a particular delight, following a half-dozen of the men who work in the travel agency and have somehow gotten caught up in a battle they cannot begin to make sense of.

But as the book goes on, Gonzales keeps piling on characters and backstories and complications -- as if all of the flashbacks weren't enough, there's eventually a flashforward to ten years later -- and it all begins to crumble under its own weight.

Gonzales has done a thorough and complex job of world-building. He hints at characters and story lines which could make marvelous books in their own right. I would happily read a novel about Oyemi and Mr. Niles founding the Regional Office, or about Henry's work as the head of recruitment, or a collection of stories about the Office's great operatives and their most daring missions.

The problem is that Gonzales has tried to stuff all of those stories into one book, which gives none of them the room they need to breathe. Everything feels rushed and incomplete; things that ought to be entire chapters are crammed into single sentences.

And with insufficient time to tell any of the stories he wants to tell within his particular fictional corner of the world, Gonzales can't pay any attention at all to the world outside the Regional Office. Does the greater world know of all the threats from which the Office's operatives have saved it? Who was fighting off those threats before the Office? What connection, if any, does the Office have to the world's governments? Without a broader context, the Regional Office feels too hermetically sealed and insulated from reality, and that winds up reducing the stakes. Who's going to know about, or care about, whether the attack on the Office succeeds or fails? How is the world going to be changed by the result?

To be sure, there are worse authorial sins than too much ambition. Better a writer should attempt too much than be content to lazily coast on formulaic tropes and formulas. And even as the storytelling and plotting get more and more convoluted, Gonzales's prose is always fun to read. I will be curious to see what he does next, and I hope that he will learn a bit of restraint to go along with his unbridled energy and creativity. show less

The so-called Regional Office is an organization that uses young super-powered women and precognitive oracles to combat the amassing forces of darkness, while disguised as a super-fancy travel agency. And the Regional Office is, as the title indicates, under attack: by a different group of young super-powered women, and mercenaries, and alienated employees.

It's a pretty odd book, but not because of the fantastical elements. In fact, those mostly consist of a collection of fun but familiar fantasy/superhero/action movie tropes (albeit with an interestingly original idea here and there). It's more the way those tropes are approached that's odd, as if the novel's focus is constantly just a little to the left of where you'd expect it to be, show more taking for granted or leaving unexplained things that most stories would make a point of concentrating on, while focusing on details that most stories would largely ignore.

The structure is also odd. Mostly it features the POV of one of two women, each on a different side of the conflict. Within each POV section, very short chapters alternate rapidly between the present action and that character's past, sometimes even featuring flashbacks within the flashbacks. Which maybe isn't too weird, but then there are the sections that are supposedly extracted from a scholarly analysis of the events written many years later, which are full of details that may or may not have happened, presented in a decidedly unobjective style that makes you wonder just who these future scholars are and exactly what they know. Oh, and then there's the interlude that's written largely in first person plural...

Not all of this works equally well, I think, but parts of it work brilliantly. In the end, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it all, or quite what I make of it, but reading it was an interesting experience, and mostly an enjoyable one. And I kind of have to admire its audacity. show less

If Joss Whedon wrote Die Hard...I think that's a great way to describe this book. It's lady assassins, loads of action, a little love, lots of revenge. Basically, it's some of the most fun you'll have reading a book. Especially if you're like me and enjoy multiple perspectives, flashbacks (maybe even flash forwards), interludes from kind of related documents, pop culture references, and a touch of science fiction.

I would've liked a little more at the end, something that offered something more concrete of a finish, tied up just a couple more loose strings. (Is Emma alive or dead, was she magicked into existence?)

Perfect for fans of Joss Whedon (especially Dollhouse), Lexicon by Max Berry, Minority Report, and maybe fans of the Ex-Heroes show more series. show less

I think going into this book mostly blind is the best bet. I was caught initially by the bright cover (of course I was) and intrigued by the sci-fi setting and while I had no expectations of what I was getting myself in to, this book did not disappoint.

This book centers around a group of super-powered women who are hired to kick ass and save the world. There is, however, a splinter group of recruits who are being trained to attack and take down the women that run the Regional Office. The plot is a little hard to follow at first, as we’re getting past and present experiences from women on both sides (in a sort of stream of consciousness format): Rose (trained to destroy the Regional Office) and Sarah (a worker at the Office), as well show more as excepts from some sort of paper written about the founding of the Regional Office and the resulting attack – and we don’t know who wrote that paper.

Once I adjusted to the constantly changing viewpoints, this book was a lot of fun. We get a darker look at what it’s like to be super-powered, especially from young, cynical Rose, who is recruited to destroy the Office and nothing quite turns out as she expects.

I won’t say much about the plot, but I enjoyed the style of the book immensely – it was fast paced with good action scenes and I enjoyed our two main characters. I’d like to share a couple quotes.

Rose’s thoughts about training to be a super assassin:

“[It would be like] An Officer and a Gentleman, but without the gentleman bit. Her pitted against the hard-ass drill sergeant. She’d be the spitfire who constantly mouthed off and who would ultimately reveal herself to be pitted against her inner demons, not the drill sergeant at all, and in the process develop a bond with her fellow trainees, becoming in their eyes an example of what not to do, of how not to act, but also, in the end, by the end of boot came or whatever this place was, becoming for them, also, an example of a hard battle fought and won with difficulty, tenacity, and through her indomitable spirit and unfathomable skill.”

A letter to Sarah:

“We navigate through like with the good-faith hope that we are doing our best, that we are aimed in the right directions, that we are helping the helpless. Maybe we slip, maybe we mess up, maybe from time to time we do things that are less the right thing. Or we cut corners, or we make choices that serve our interests over the interests of those who depend on us, or we hide the consequences of the decisions we have made with the hope that those consequences will never be seen despite how often we make those same decisions. We go back to the ones we love when clearly they do not love us, or do not know how to love us, or show us their love in a way easily mistaken for hate. We are weak in the face of the hard work it sometimes takes to be strong. We convince ourselves (incorrectly) that silence is not a form of consent. We let good people die and sometimes we kill them ourselves and we hide and we hid and we hide and soon hiding becomes the thing we are best at doing.” show less

An odd book, full of powerful, violent -- yet still self-doubting -- superwomen. Characters not entirely likeable, yet compelling. You need to pay attention, the story wanders about & seems disconnected -- until it's not. Definitely an original. If you like "The Library at Mount Char," this is in the same weird league.

I was crazy about his story collection, The Miniature Wife and Other Stories, so I was pumped about his new novel. It had an off-the-wall premise, which showed much promise. It only partially delivers and never really soared for me. I did like some of it's wry humor and I liked kick-ass Sara, with her cyborg arm. I still give it 3 stars but was hoping for much more.

3 1/2 stars. Although the “Regional Office” is an underground (literally) organization of kick-ass women who fight the forces of evil, all of that action takes place offstage - think Rosencranz and Guildenstern - while the plot focuses on the revolt in, and destruction of, "The Regional Office". There's plenty of action and bloody mayhem (including a roving bionic arm and some hapless hostages), told with cartoony humor (that works) and genuine heart and pathos. A challenging combination, but the author made it work for me. It’s a fast read, with very short chapters that seesaw between the past and present of different characters, interspersed with official reports of the events. I considered bailing after the first 20 or so pages show more which focus on snarky teen Rose, but I’m really glad I stuck with it, since every other character was much more interesting, and the writing was fun. My only complaint - kick-ass female ninja types who look like models is a tired cliché, and doesn’t do justice to all the good stuff this book has going for it. show less