The Regional Office is Under Attack!

The plot is as explosively paced as a comic book’s, but juggles some dextrous genre shifts. Gonzales fills the workaday office with a glorious plot, giving voice to the John McClane fantasies lying dormant in cubicles across the world. I inhaled this book so quickly that I missed plot points on first read: best to let it wash over you and then marvel in retrospect at the clues you flew past. * The Guardian *
“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.” * New York Times book review *
“[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 *
“A tour-de-force… [R]epurposes the devices of a genre specializing in fantasies of mastery into a portrait of chastened adults moving through a world where mastery eludes us all… [W]hat binds the whole thing together is a persistent, self-contradictory human desire to both be extraordinary and to fit in, finally, somewhere. The Regional Office Is Under Attack! sneaks up on you. It starts out looking like a heist yarn intertwined with a couple of origin stories, but it keeps coming back to the stuff people devour superhero comics and spy thrillers to escape: isolation, confusion, triviality, moral doubt.” -- Laura Miller * Slate *
“A hugely entertaining read.” * Chicago Tribune *
“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.” * The Rumpus *
“The Regional Office really IS under attack! This is not metaphor! It is a wry and propulsive work of inventive fiction by a terrific young writer! Read it!” * Jess Walter, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins *
“This book is a winged creation, and absolutely marvelous. Gonzales keeps turning the kaleidoscope to reveal the strangest, darkest, and most beautiful dimensions of human love, and the conversion of mechanical fury into living strength.” * Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! *
“[W]hen it comes to fiction it usually doesn’t bring out the LOLs so much as me laughing on the inside. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to find myself cracking up during some of the fight scenes and especially a bunch of the lines with curses while listening to the audiobook of The Regional Office is Under Attack!” * BookRiot *
“So fresh and so funny, the pacing is so fast and crackling, you won't be able to stop reading.” * Tor *
“I wanted to go for a ride and The Regional Office is Under Attack! took me on one… I was rewarded with pure satisfaction.” * BookRiot, The Best Books of 2016 So Far *
“This book is a romp if ever there was one. . . This book is just as exciting as the explanation point in its title makes it sound. It’s the kind of read every reader hungers for.” * Bustle *
“You may not be familiar with the name Manuel Gonzales, but once you’ve had the pleasure of delving into one of his out-of-the-ordinary literary creations, you won’t forget it… In his debut novel, The Regional Office Is Under Attack!, Gonzales conjures a futuristic world of super-powered female assassins… Backstory on each character and the Regional Office itself is delicately spliced between action-packed scenes, making this a wonderfully choreographed narrative. The moment you think you have a grasp on the truth about the Regional Office, Gonzales tosses in a twist that will have you questioning your understanding all over again… The amount of detail Gonzales infuses into this world makes it come alive in an engaging, quirky and delightful way, creating a perfect backdrop to a page-turning plot. Gonzales' tale has something for every reader: Double agents! Secret romantic trysts! Conspiracy! Fight scenes! Friendships gone awry! At its core, however, The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is ultimately a tale of vengeance—one during which you’ll find yourself struggling to choose a side.” * BookPage *
“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 (STARRED review) *
“The narrative not only bounces between perspectives in short, propelling chapters, but also pinballs in time... Gonzales writes with an abundance of imagination, riffing on comic book and pop culture plot lines and characters while adding his own unique perspective... there are moments of brilliance.” * Publishers Weekly *
“A hyperkinetic sci-fi set piece along the lines of Die Hard seeded with paranormal elements cribbed from half a dozen other franchises and the absent-parent grudges that fuel any number of teen novels. … Genre enthusiasts will love the spooky cyberpunk spirit at play here, and resolute readers will be rewarded with an unexpected ending that ratchets up the action long after the Regional Office has been abandoned. A surprisingly erudite bit of sci-fi that throws in everything but the kitchen sink.” * Kirkus *