What do you think?
Rate this book
The Mostly Forgotten Spy
Not yet published
Expected 1 Jul 26The Mostly Forgotten Spy(Book 1 of Incidental Heroics)
You’d think the perfect spy would be the one you can’t remember. Jenna thought that too before her first mission went off the rails in approximately seventeen different ways.
Jenna possesses a unique she can wipe herself from the minds of everyone on Earth. It’s the ultimate tool for a spy, but it's hard enough to find friends who don't flake out on plans when they remember you even exist.
She joined ASSIST—the world’s most legendary (and bureaucratically incompetent) spy organization—to make connections and find a cure. For her first mission, they sent her on a routine infiltration to a low-level supervillain job fair.
But “routine” should not involve a stolen rocket-powered limo, unsecured assault weapons, or nearly being flung into a ditch at 300 mph. Now Jenna is trapped deep inside a villainous empire,
Lethal "training" from coworkers who want her dead.A parasitic new sister she definitely didn't ask for.Being used as a guinea pig by an agency that considers her as good as dead.A boss who can resist her memory wipes and actually likes her (which is the most dangerous thing of all).In a world where the logic is askew and the villains are more eccentric than their powers, Jenna just wants to be remembered. But first, she has to survive being noticed.
You’d think the perfect spy would be the one you can’t remember. Jenna thought that too before her first mission went off the rails in approximately seventeen different ways.
Jenna possesses a unique she can wipe herself from the minds of everyone on Earth. It’s the ultimate tool for a spy, but it's hard enough to find friends who don't flake out on plans when they remember you even exist.
She joined ASSIST—the world’s most legendary (and bureaucratically incompetent) spy organization—to make connections and find a cure. For her first mission, they sent her on a routine infiltration to a low-level supervillain job fair.
But “routine” should not involve a stolen rocket-powered limo, unsecured assault weapons, or nearly being flung into a ditch at 300 mph. Now Jenna is trapped deep inside a villainous empire,
Lethal "training" from coworkers who want her dead.A parasitic new sister she definitely didn't ask for.Being used as a guinea pig by an agency that considers her as good as dead.A boss who can resist her memory wipes and actually likes her (which is the most dangerous thing of all).In a world where the logic is askew and the villains are more eccentric than their powers, Jenna just wants to be remembered. But first, she has to survive being noticed.
305 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication July 1, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Mostly forgettable.
It's a supers story in a world where about 60% of people have powers of some sort, mainly fairly useless ones. The main character is tasked with infiltrating a supervillain group by what turns out to be a tragicomically inept superhero support organization, but rather than getting one appropriate to her beginner status, she instead gets swept up in events and ends up in a group which is well above her abilities. Or is it? She manages to muddle through, using her ability to make people forget her, along with bluff, good luck, determination and the help of friends she meets along the way.
The prose is often ponderous, as are the attempts at humour, and the humour tends to be dark - casual violence played for laughs. The characters are thin and generic. At times, there's a conceit that it's being written by someone in the setting, but that comes and goes and is eventually no longer mentioned. It does get a couple of good wordplays off.
I had a pre-publication version from Netgalley, which asks me to believe that the "minor typographic errors" in it will be corrected before publication. I didn't spot many typos, apart from inconsistent name spelling, but I did see instances of several common issues - incorrect dialog punctuation, dangling modifiers, unclear pronoun references, "may" in past tense instead of "might," missing past perfect tense, a couple of homonyms - though none in large numbers. I'm skeptical that they'll all be corrected before publication, but I could be wrong. To be clear, this is a lot better than most superhero novels, which for some reason rank alongside LitRPG and steampunk as most likely to have awful copy editing.
I didn't ever come to love it, but I didn't hate it. It was just OK. Someone for whom the humour was a better fit would probably enjoy it more.
It's a supers story in a world where about 60% of people have powers of some sort, mainly fairly useless ones. The main character is tasked with infiltrating a supervillain group by what turns out to be a tragicomically inept superhero support organization, but rather than getting one appropriate to her beginner status, she instead gets swept up in events and ends up in a group which is well above her abilities. Or is it? She manages to muddle through, using her ability to make people forget her, along with bluff, good luck, determination and the help of friends she meets along the way.
The prose is often ponderous, as are the attempts at humour, and the humour tends to be dark - casual violence played for laughs. The characters are thin and generic. At times, there's a conceit that it's being written by someone in the setting, but that comes and goes and is eventually no longer mentioned. It does get a couple of good wordplays off.
I had a pre-publication version from Netgalley, which asks me to believe that the "minor typographic errors" in it will be corrected before publication. I didn't spot many typos, apart from inconsistent name spelling, but I did see instances of several common issues - incorrect dialog punctuation, dangling modifiers, unclear pronoun references, "may" in past tense instead of "might," missing past perfect tense, a couple of homonyms - though none in large numbers. I'm skeptical that they'll all be corrected before publication, but I could be wrong. To be clear, this is a lot better than most superhero novels, which for some reason rank alongside LitRPG and steampunk as most likely to have awful copy editing.
I didn't ever come to love it, but I didn't hate it. It was just OK. Someone for whom the humour was a better fit would probably enjoy it more.
Review of advance copy
Thanks to BookSirens for the ARC.
This was a fun, chaotic novel with a really enjoyable storyline. There were a few things that had me a little lost where I couldn't follow exactly what was happening, but for the most part, I enjoyed the characters and the way their entirely different goals came together. If the main characters were a D&D party, I would never in a million years DM for them - but boy was the carnage good to read about! I'll definitely keep an eye out for the sequel.
This was a fun, chaotic novel with a really enjoyable storyline. There were a few things that had me a little lost where I couldn't follow exactly what was happening, but for the most part, I enjoyed the characters and the way their entirely different goals came together. If the main characters were a D&D party, I would never in a million years DM for them - but boy was the carnage good to read about! I'll definitely keep an eye out for the sequel.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews