The Regional Office Is Under Attack!
A Novel
-
-
3.6 • 41 Ratings
-
-
- $7.99
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
Read it!” —Jess Walter, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins
"[R]ollicking good fun.” —New York Times Book Review
"A tour-de-force." —Laura Miller, Slate
In a world beset by amassing forces of darkness, one organization—the Regional Office—and its coterie of super-powered female assassins protects the globe from annihilation.
At its helm, the mysterious Oyemi and her oracles seek out new recruits and root out evil plots. Then a prophecy suggests that someone from inside might bring about its downfall. And now, the Regional Office is under attack.
Recruited by a defector from within, Rose is a young assassin leading the attack, eager to stretch into her powers and prove herself on her first mission. Defending the Regional Office is Sarah—who may or may not have a mechanical arm—fiercely devoted to the organization that took her in as a young woman in the wake of her mother’s sudden disappearance. On the day that the Regional Office is attacked, Rose’s and Sarah’s stories will overlap, their lives will collide, and the world as they know it just might end.
Weaving in a brilliantly conceived mythology, fantastical magical powers, teenage crushes, and kinetic fight scenes, The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is a seismically entertaining debut novel about revenge and allegiance and love.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Like Alice down the rabbit hole and Lucy in the sky with diamonds, we felt pleasantly disoriented reading The Regional Office Is Under Attack!. It’s the strange, witty story of a shadow organization housed underground a Manhattan travel agency. There, the group’s radioactive founder and her loyal partner recruit and train female Oracles and Assassins to defeat evil forces hell-bent on global destruction. Manuel Gonzales is a scarily good writer who gracefully zigs and zags between a turbo-charged action movie and the gripping backstories of two of the Regional Office’s superhuman heroines. We can safely say we’ve never read anything quite like this novel—and we loved every minute of the ride.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gonzales, already the author of an excellent story collection (The Miniature Wife), offers an intricate, if frustrating, debut novel about a subterranean superhero organization under attack by its own rogue operatives. Split between characters on both sides of the ambush Rose, hoping to overthrow the Regional Office, and Sarah, bound to protect the narrative not only bounces between perspectives in short, propelling chapters, but also pinballs in time, revealing, amid the chaos, the history of the clandestine Manhattan-based society, which recruits young women with extraordinary powers to protect the world from terrors unseen by average citizens. Tucked a mile underground (beneath an office dealing in luxury getaways for the rich and famous), these women train and receive assignments from people like the charming Henry, and founding leaders Mr. Niles and the mysterious Oyemi, but when an internal rift finds Henry at odds with his superiors, he organizes a revolt. Gonzales writes with an abundance of imagination, riffing on comic book and pop culture plot lines and characters while adding his own unique perspective. The novel is not as satisfying as his short stories, and it occasionally feels overextended, but there are moments of brilliance.
Customer Reviews
Provoking and Pleasing
At once poetic and parody Gonzales' novel dishes up fast action while painting characters and situations that warrant a slow gaze. In the end the reader will feel reasonably certain that out there, somewhere, maybe close by, are forces of great, unimaginable power barely held at bay.
The Regional Office is Under Attack!
Pithy, contemporary writing. Interesting labyrinth of present, past, and future scenes/backfill. Read this.
Don't do it.
I can not believe I forced myself to finish reading this book. Manuel Gonzales can I have my $ 28 back please?