Regional Office Is Under Attack (Gonzales) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Zounds! Something has gone horribly wrong. After 20 years of fighting against the forces of evil, The Regional Office has come under attack, but no one can figure out why…or who. Manuel Gonzales has written a terrific, quirky novel, a real genre-bender that’s tough to pin down (and put down). It’s hard to know what to call it—sci-fi, fantasy, action-thriller, parody, or romance. Answer: All of the above, which is precisely what makes the book such fun.  READ MORE.
P.J. Adler - LitLovers


Supernaturally powerful though they may be, these characters, like us, are constantly searching for their role in the world: the place where they fit in…Like Gonzales's 2013 story collection, The Miniature Wife, The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is primarily concerned not with the action-packed events at the surface but with the greater question of human alienation, through talent, technology or a combination of the two…. Gonzales's prose is crisp, but fittingly looping and parenthetical, often doubling back on itself to offer a slightly different interpretation…. The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is an entertaining and satisfying novel. Like the best of the stories it satirizes so gently, it's rollicking good fun on the surface, action-packed and shiny in all the right places; underneath that surface, though, it's thoughtful and well considered. Gonzales has created a superheroic fighting force of the kind we've grown so used to through constant exposure to the Avengers and various iterations of the X-Men, and then he has turned out their pockets and flipped open their diaries.
Kelly Braffet - New York Times Book Review


The novel is divided into four books, and we read about Rose and Sarah in short bursts of action that alternate between the past and present. It’s an odd narrative structure,...which may be why this book feels more like a pitch for TV than a fully fleshed out novel; it is tailor-made for the small screen. And yet, it’s just so much fun to read.
Dallas Morning News


[H]ighly entertaining… Wonderfully strange and fun, Gonzales’ novel follows both the women attacking and defending the Regional Office and how their lives intersect.
Buzzfeed


Like the writers he is compared to, Gonzales’s stories’ fantastic premises are always anchored in real-world conflicts that hold universal familiarity. The Regional Office is Under Attack!, …carries some of his stories’ thematic arsenal into a book length narrative…. The story nods to tons of tropes—from Kill Bill and Charlie’s Angels to Blade Runner and The Karate Kid—but it frequently subverts those tropes and uses them to flesh out characters that dazzle.
Rumpus


The Regional Office is Under Attack!—set in the underground headquarters of an organization deploying a team of "superpowered warrior women" to battle "the forces of darkness that threaten, at nearly every turn, the fate of the planet"—is fundamentally an office novel, a tale of the prosaic struggles of young adulthood, set, with deliciously rich irony, against a distant background of absurdly operatic adventure.
Slate


[A]n intricate, if frustrating, debut novel about a subterranean superhero organization under attack by its own rogue operatives.... 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...occasionally feels overextended, but there are moments of brilliance.
Publishers Weekly


[A] nonstop action fest peppered with pop-culture references, explosions, and karate-esque fight scenes.... The plotline can be confusing owing to the narrative changing among the characters, and their differing perceptions of reality, but the action is captivating. —Jennifer Funk, McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, IL
Library Journal


(Starred review.) You might want to get a firm grip on your socks before cracking open this one; otherwise, Gonzales is likely to knock them off. It's very difficult to categorize this mind-bending novel... it's pure excitement.... A brilliant genre-blender.
Booklist


A clash of swords, spells, and wills erupts in an upper Manhattan office building under assault by well-armed mercenaries. A dense mythology threatens to undermine this frenetic action novel..., but the author just manages to wobble to the end.... A surprisingly erudite bit of sci-fi that throws in everything but the kitchen sink.
Kirkus Reviews