Action movies ain't what they used to be. Sure, computer imaging has helped Hollywood create some of the craziest action scenes you could possibly imagine, but when CGI replaces lower-tech tricks like intrigue, strong characters, and good old-fashioned explosions, what's an '80s action nostalgic to do?

Author Manuel Gonzales may have the answer with The Regional Office Is Under Attack!, which I recommend to anyone who would rather get their summer-movie fix on paper—and who hungers for that rare mix of crazy action and phenomenal character introspection.

This review contains a few spoilers, not least of which is the book's title. The Regional Office is a secret organization, disguised as a boutique travel agency, that sends an army of young women superheroes to fight the "forces of darkness," including zombies, alien invaders, and mad scientists.

Trouble begins when a few Regional Office members form a rogue splinter group in an effort to take out their former colleagues. Their attack begins on page one, so there's no waiting for the fireworks to begin, no setup, no throat-clearing other than a brief prologue explaining what, exactly, the Regional Office is. The bulk of The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is the attack on the Regional Office.

On opposite sides of the battle stand Rose and Sarah. Rose is a troubled young girl who's about to lead the attack's most crucial mission at the start of the novel. Sarah, meanwhile, is a Regional Office administrator who was fitted with a robot arm when she joined the organization, only to discover that nobody likes a cyborg. Both women are pining for unattainable men. Rose has a complicated crush on her boss, who betrayed the Regional Office for the sake of another woman. Sarah is obsessed with the director of the Regional Office, who turns out to have deceived her in all sorts of ways.

The best way I can describe The Regional Office is "Die Hard meets Kill Bill, with a smattering of Charlie Kaufman and David Cronenberg." Badass women shoot, fight, run, and hide in an enclosed office, all mixed with wry humor, body horror, random weirdness, and wild setpieces.

What's funny is that Gonzales is best known for his acclaimed short story collection, The Miniature Wife and Other Stories, which I once described as "like reading Kafka on Ketamine." Gonzales tells those stories with a huge dose of irony and distance from his characters, and he mostly explores quirky premises with a dark humor reminiscent of George Saunders. But for his first full novel, Gonzales leaves behind some of the surrealism and irony to embrace his action-movie premise. As good as his story collection is, The Regional Office is even more entertaining and wild—yet still delivers a powerful dose of character-focused storytelling. The writing is still snarky and wonderfully weird, but it also sucks you into the story of two women locked in an ultraviolent, bitter war. Along the way, we get flashbacks that show how both Rose and Sarah got to where they are.

Interspersed with the action are excerpts from a documentary about the history of the Regional Office, which fills in backstory as well as sets up poignant revelations toward the end of the book. And then there's a long first-person account by a random office worker caught up in the slaughter who really believes this is just a boutique travel agency. The "Office" in The Regional Office Is Under Attack! actually matters: Gonzales is merciless when it comes to pulling apart every kind of office politics, from the abuse of interns to the ways office hierarchies can turn toxic. Look past the ninjas and the paratroopers and you might recognize your own workplace.

Characters openly talk about Die Hard in the middle of the most Die Hard-influenced section, and in general, The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is very metafictional. This works because the players' film fandom ties into the plot in satisfying ways. The founder of the Regional Office, a woman named Oyemi, finds three women with psychic powers and turns them into Oracles who warn of upcoming threats—but because Oyemi has seen too many movies, she shaves their heads and puts them in kiddie pools full of KY Jelly, with cables going from their heads to a wall of computers. Yup, just like Minority Report. Instead of weirdness for weirdness' sake, everything crazy comes organically from what someone might think during an extreme situation.

Without giving too much away, The Regional Office eventually becomes an exploration of posthumanity and the cost of being "special." Rose's cyborg arm is just one more way that people in this story give up their humanity—and since I already mentioned David Cronenberg, it's a given that some intense body horror happens along the way. The Regional Office is both a larger-than-life entertainment about superpowered assassins, secret organizations, bizarre magic, and superscience, while simultaneously being an intimate story about flawed people who have given up more than they realize.