A bright, good‑natured adventure with a surprising amount of heart.
Good help can be hard to find, especially if you’re a notorious supervillain recruiting new minions. Hence, the well-attended evil job fair in the Supreme Empire of Eternal Darkness. Here, minions of varying skill levels might find employment with villains of any rank. For Agent Jenna Jacek of the Advanced Super Support International Special Teams, she’s not gunning for a low-level minion role. Well, she is, but only to infiltrate an organization of ill repute as a spy for ASSIST. Her first goal? Lock on to a supervillain she can handle. If all goes well, this mission will be the boost her career needs. Plans go out the window, however, when infamous Kari Detzer presses Jenna into service. Kari is powerful, cruel, reckless, and the last villain Jenna wants as a boss. Jenna calls on ASSIST for immediate extraction, but incompetent leadership means her only escape route runs straight through Kari and that demented lair‑slash‑laboratory of hers. So Jenna cuts a deal, makes a plan, and gathers a team to help her. If Jenna isn’t slaughtered by Kari and can survive training for 14 days, escape will be hers. But she’ll have to pass an outrageously terrifying test, adjust to life with a parasitic new sister, keep up her spy work while undercover, and hope her new boss doesn’t burn the whole lair down with her inside. It’s a lot, but nobody said being a superhero was easy. If Jenna can get her own mind-erasing power charged up enough to succeed, she might actually get the chance to become the spy she’s always imagined she could be.
The line between hero and villain has never been finer, a truth the delightfully chaotic cast of The Mostly Forgotten Spy proves again and again. Whether in the bureaucratic slowdown of supervillaindom or the exaggerated flair of weapons like the Killstreak Arms Fleshpopper, witty satire is certainly part of the book’s charm. But it’s only one layer of the experience. Much of the book’s appeal comes from its unpredictable characters. Quirky side figures such as over‑enthusiastic fangirl Amy, comically villainous Kari, or the ever‑lovable Chair add warmth and charm, grounding the story’s lighter moments. Some scenes contain uneven phrasing that makes certain exchanges harder to follow, so the humor loses a bit of its edge. Even so, the relaxed, offhand narrative style supports the novel’s wonderfully irreverent tone. Beyond the laugh-out-loud moments, the story invests in its heroes and villains with intriguing arcs that add unexpected depth to a tale that could have coasted on whimsy alone. A bright, good‑natured adventure with a surprising amount of heart, The Mostly Forgotten Spy delivers the spirited fun that comic fantasy promises while still taking its characters seriously.
