Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn’t glamorous. The Boys meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation in this smart, imaginative, and evocative novel of love, betrayal, revenge, and redemption, told with razor-sharp wit and affection, in which a young woman discovers the greatest superpower-for good or ill-is a properly executed spreadsheet.Īnna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Ultimately, workplace fantasy sprinkles something special on life’s Outlook.“This book is fast, furious, compelling, and angry as hell.' - Seanan McGuire, New York Times bestselling author Fantasy is notorious for putting magic in familiar spaces from workplace fantasy, to dark academia, to magic boarding schools. But, as a modern office employee, I enjoy relating to excel flow and the tone of workplace correspondence. So, Workplace Fantasy?Īs a lover of myth, I appreciate adaptations of old creatures in fantasy. Moral: if lost in the job market, find a troubled lawyer and become a fairy private eye. Turns out legal admin becomes much more interesting when you mix in fey myth, mysterious biker gangs, and memories from a past life. Instead, Olivia falls into work with a local lawyer, and together they discover magic that spans generations. Her old life swiftly crumbles when the news comes out that her biological parents are occult serial killers. Olivia graduates college with a useless English degree, a distant boyfriend, and a pair of rich parents who try. It feels natural that there would be at least a dozen fantastical offices.Ĭontent Warnings: Death, Explicit Depiction of Mental Illness, Starvation, Incarceration Honestly, I am not surprised many fantasy authors familiar with bureaucracy decide to combine the two.

I can vouch for the veracity of the office work in the below novels. As a young professional, I spend many an hour getting up close and personal with Microsoft Office Suite. When office work became a larger part of everyday life, authors began to play with corporate structure in fantasy. An Argument for the Term Workplace Fantasy Although workplace fantasy is not a technical sub-genre, I will use the term as a catchall for books with office magic.

I argue workplace fantasy novels are an extension of the sub-genre where office work is a crucial component of fantasy plots. Now, workplace fiction or corporate fiction is an interesting sub-genre that places characters in a modern office setting. Does your magical employment involve spreadsheets, scheduling, emails, and a corporate management structure? If so, you may be in a workplace fantasy novel.

Hench by natalie zina walschots