Strictly No Heroics

January 1, 2023
Seventeen-year-old Riley Jones becomes a henchman. When a Super harasses her friend Javira Neita at the vegan burger place where they work, Riley, who is a Normie, retaliates with a faceful of frozen veggie burgers. Fired for assaulting a customer and in need of money for therapy for her anxiety, Riley finds Hench, the only company willing to take her on. Working as a henchman becomes her way to lash out against a society that favors those with superpowers. At first, Riley is thrilled to join the squad, but her bubble bursts when she discovers their true purpose: Instead of striking down arrogant heroes, henchmen are trained to miss all their shots, acting incompetent to stall for time and disrupt their villainous clients' plans. The situation grows more complicated as Amelia Lopez, a scientist hunted by a villain called the Ferocious Flamer, uses her last moments to give Riley her research on mysterious Project Zero. Riley is torn between playing it safe and taking up Amelia's torch. Radley explores how it feels to be the little guy through the allegorical lens of superpowers: Superemacist ideology has many parallels readers will recognize from the real world, and the setting doesn't come across as a fictional dystopia due to this grounding in social issues. Riley's journey in this world populated with queer and racially diverse characters is both thrilling and galvanizing. A call to action as much as a piece of entertaining fiction. (Science fiction. 14-18)

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Starred review from January 16, 2023
A normal human teenager living in a world where superheroes and villains are standard grapples with high school crushes and a new summer job in this insightful, multilayered debut. Seventeen-year-old Riley Jones, who’s struggling to manage her anxiety and figure out how to tell her family she’s queer, lives by three simple rules: “Keep your head down. Don’t make enemies. Strictly no heroics.” But when she’s fired from her food service gig for smacking a hero after he sexually harasses her coworker, she gets a job at Hench, a company that supplies supervillains with all-purpose, anonymous hench-people. There, she learns that villainy isn’t always about world domination: her coworkers are, like her, just normies trying to make ends meet. Riley’s summer grows ever more complicated as the henchmen unionize, land developers look to gentrify her neighborhood, and she develops feelings for her new coworker Sherman, a gorgeous, edgy teen with plenty of attitude and secrets. Radley subverts classic comic book tropes to craft an imaginative futuristic setting grounded in realistic interpersonal challenges. In this engaging and provocative telling, Radley skillfully explores power and privilege from both human and superhuman angles. Characters are intersectionally diverse. Ages 14–up.

August 18, 2023
Grades 8-11 Riley Jones knows better than most what it means to live life as a Normie in Sunnylake City, where heroes and villains carry out superpowered battles, trashing the city on a regular basis. Riley couldn't do anything when her mom drove drunk, killing herself and causing Riley's little half-sister, Lyssa, to lose a leg. And she can't do anything now when a class-A superhero (those are the tough ones) hits on her best friend (and secret crush) in the diner where they both work. When Riley's big mouth gets her fired, she takes a job from Hench, the normies who (badly) backup supervillains in battles, and pick up their dry-cleaning to boot. Riley's plan to quietly collect her paycheck immediately goes awry and she gets caught up in a gentrification scheme that both superheroes and politicians are willing to kill to cover up. The superhero genre has going through some transitions itself in the last few years, and Radley's debut smartly winds critical issues into the propulsive plot. A thrill ride for socially conscious teens.

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