CRINGE AND WHINGE | A Book Review of Trigger Warning by William Johnstone

well because we're reviewing trigger warning I decided to wear my most masculine shirt so I made the mistake of letting all of you vote for what my next book review was going to be and you decided trigger warning now a lot of people thought that I was gonna hate this but actually I rather enjoyed it because it's about time I got into a good Neil Gaiman book and honestly I haven't read many of his things beforehand so this is a breath of fresh air frankly because this is a collection of short stories from a lot of his other works okay obviously I'm not reviewing this I'm actually reviewing well I'm basically reviewing this but we'll get to it later no all of you wanted me to go after trigger warning by William Johnstone with JK Johnstone now this one was different from the other books that I've read it is the most competently written between this the mister and everything that her niece Aeons ever touched this is the best book now that's not an accomplishment mind you the bar set so low at that point that you'd have to go out of your way not to pass it this is the literary equivalent of an Olympic athlete beating a toddler in a footrace like congratulations you've achieved nothing now I have come across William Johnstone before and I did a short review on his other book Black Friday and yeah Black Friday is not a good block it's stupid the characters are two-dimensional the plot is a bloody mess it's dumb and hackneyed and I admit I kind of liked it in kind of that turn your brain off Michael Bay explosions everywhere kind of a way it's just fun to have stupid plot lines every once in a while you just you just look I just need a stupid date plus the entire book was just one unapologetic America for he kind of uh strike out against terrorists taking over a mall that was actually called the American Way mall you get it terrorists are attacking the American Way [Music] but if a book goes after terrorists and even if it's not taking the matter seriously I've got kind of a guilty pleasure about it it's it's fun for me and this book tries to do that but miss steps terribly like to the point where yeah you you claim you're going after terrorists no you're not I I can't even have fun with this in an ironic way I mean obviously because we got all those tabs there this is a mess now there is a bit of backstory with the author which is technically not hidden there's a little note in the publishers section right here but I'm not gonna get into that mostly because it doesn't matter to me but if you are interested in the deep dark secret of the author then I would recommend you check out Jenny Nicholson's review for this book because I didn't do any research for it so I don't want to make any claims she did all the research so she can have the fun of in veiling it for you guys now Walt only did do a lot to reveal what made this book awful there is only so much she could actually cover in a reasonable time span so I'm going to do my best not to cover a lot of what she did or if she did cover it I'm gonna try to cover it differently that's not always gonna be true but I'll make an effort so you're not watching a repeat video now that being said while this book is better than a nice yawn and Al James it's still bloody mess I mean just going from the back cover alone it literally is kind of a mess because the back cover looks like it has all these splotches and grime up along the back here and it's like for lack of a better word triggering my OCD and I kind of want to clean this and I can't and I hate it John Stone country where others fear to tread apparently John Stone is renowned as like a cowboy Western writer writes a lot of like prep books you know you've got to be ready for the Armageddon or the Russians that that kind of book but I think that they're over playing themselves when they say where others fear to tread because quite frankly considering the quality of this writing it's more like where others just shrug a pathetically former Army Ranger Jake rivers is not your typical Kelton college student he's not a spoiled coddled or ultra liberal like his classmates who sneer at the Soulja Boy and I do love this because there's a typo on the back cover here for the summary he does not need a safe space or coloring books Jakes needs an education with grammar like that I agree yes you do you've just used a double negative so yeah Jake goes to this college and bad guys attack and it's up to him to stop them so yeah the the joke in my series of long book reviews continues there was a school shooting how do I come across these every goddamn time [Music] alright so starting off with the first chapter we have a pretty bad start cuz Jake's in his dorm he's studying complaining about the garbage in class that he has to go over when we get this paragraph from here on the second floor he had a good view of naphtha Gore Plaza the large park like area in the center of Kelton colleges campus three residence halls Piersol Olmstead in Cola Han running north to south bordered the western side of the plaza the administration building was at the northern end the main Science Building Terrell Hall to the south the big burner Memorial Library was directly across from where Jake looked out the window now take all of that and disregard it entirely because none of that really comes into you play later on while the buildings do get mentioned and somewhat used later on you need to know nothing of where they are in relation to each other this entire paragraph was to set everything up so you can create like a mental map for you but you know an easier way to do that an actual map now I am a big advocate for maps in books they are awesome and I love them but the author chose not to include them here which not only would have saved a paragraph of otherwise wasted space you never use anything like that throughout the rest of the book this is just a clumsy attempts to build the world without introducing it naturally building the world is awesome but if you have to unload it in this paragraph long exposition dump like that you're making a mistake all right so Jake goes out he tries to save this woman who's having a scuffle with her boyfriend and he gets accused of being a fascist and gets attacked by a bunch of thugs wearing masks now fortunately Jake he is a God Tyr badass so nothing ever really threatens him in any meaningful way throughout the book so yeah he gets surrounded by a bunch of pricks who come at him with pipes and chains and things he goes full Jackie Chan and disarms a few of them Jake reached up closed his right hand around the pipe and wrenched it free of the attackers grip he twirled it jabbed the end into the kid's stomach and sent him staggering backwards gagging and retching moving too fast to see in the shadows Jake let his instincts and a faintly heard sound guide him he lifted the pipe as another of the figures slash at him with a chain the chain wrapped around the pipe and Jake used it to jerk the guide towards him Jake's left fist shot out in a straight jab that popped the cartilage and the guy's nose he held in pain Jake pivoted swung pipe and chain and chloral the chain around another attackers ankle a quick tug yanked the guy's legs out from under him and dropped him hard on his back on the concrete that enact all the breath out of him and left him gasping for air so yeah like I said is a an a-plus badass and kicks all the asses of all that bad guys now I can't speak for the rest of the Johnstone catalogue but this is extremely juvenile not the the the subject matter itself really but the way that it's approached the prose is so clumsy this whole thing comes across like an angry writing project that some first grader came up with because that I'll show all that bullies who are mean to him so the fight ends with Jake getting tased by some of campus security it takes two tasers to knock him down and to understand how incredible of a feat that is here is a bodybuilder getting shot with a Taser we're introduced to Frank McRaney head of the campus security and one of the only sympathetic voices for Jake on campus although we're gonna say I do rather enjoy his name Frank McRaney cuz he sounds like a loose cannon cop damnit McCraney you're gonna stop beating up all your suspects I can't help it chief I'm just a loose cannon where's all my ass you'll get results McCraney and that's the quality of writing you had to look forward to with this so this is used to segue into a flashback to why Jake decided to go to college here because apparently his grandfather is a multi-billionaire who rather enjoyed Kelton and in front of his this great American institution where Jake would have a chance to better himself because he decided not to re-enlist with the army problem was the army wasn't what it once had been and health and college sure as hell wasn't Jake McRaney prodded but Jake was already lost in the past I've got to go over this line I'm gonna stop every once in a while to give some of the clothing pros that this book has to offer this one is where Jake is talking with his grandfather and they're there at a clay pigeon range just shooting shotguns and apparently the grandfather is rather competitive that wasn't all of it Jake knew the old man still had a strong competitive streak he wasn't necessarily trying to show Jacob but of Jake missed one or both of the targets and then his grandfather took the gun back and broke both of the is so bad I can't even read it straight broke both the next time he would get a considerable amount of satisfaction out of that I've said it before I'll say it again read your sentences out loud in the next chapter we meet Jake's faculty advisor a guy named dr. Erma Tumbo apparently that's short for Humboldt but I'm gonna go with matumbo it's easier he's a white guy who identifies as african-american which is messed up because only Robert Downey jr. gets to do that what do you mean you people what do you mean you people and pretty much the entire chapter is used as an excuse to complain about the conditions on campus like the rest of the book has been so far anyway Jake finally knocks out of that two chapters long flashback how long do you think he was just staring off into space so I can't help but wonder if McRaney is there at his desk trying to get Jake's attention like hey Jake come on man wake up and this is where we get introduced to officer cow Granderson well frankly I don't even understand what Granderson is as a character because he both hates authority figures but wants to be an authority figure like he wants to be a cop and he is a public safety officer he's armed with a teaser but still hates himself but he doesn't so I don't know like I said all the characters in Johnston's writing are two-dimensional as hell blah blah blah Jake gets attacked again this time by only a handful of thugs and apparently they meant to kill him but I'm like the punks from before these guys are apparently professionally trained Jake could tell by the way they moved that they had had some training maybe military maybe police academy or else their group funded by liberal money had paid somebody with experience to teach them a few things okay and I'm not gonna get into this too much but because no one watches this channel for mycological views and I hate politics because it's divisive but one of the more awkward things that this book does it inserts an anti liberal bias as many times as you can even when it's out of place or can't be proven or as speculative it's just mean-spirited like there are ways to have discussions there are ways to make points this isn't it this is a mess politics these days has devolved away from discussing differences of opinions and policies and has just become finding something wrong with whoever you're talking about and running with that as your talking point even if it's not true but here's my question though we know from later on in the book that these guys are in fact professionals they are trying to take Jake out specifically because Jake is a threat to their plans why then do they only come at him with pipes and chains because they have guns why don't they just walk up on the sidewalk at night like this is here and shoot him in the head and even if they don't care about being caught during the big attack later on in the book they're not wearing masks they're either these are dumb villains [Music] but anyway Jake kicks their asses very easily and by the end of this he gets to meet Natalie and she is introduced so awkwardly and he just hears a voice that says I saw what you did back there and we know nothing about who even spoke this is how this is all introduced Jake stopped short instantly he took in several details about the person who had just spoken to him enough that he was reasonably sure he wasn't about to be under attack again although he couldn't be certain about that he reminded himself after all women could be dangerous to even women as attractive as this one maybe especially women as attractive as this one a guy might stand there thinking about how hot she was and never even realized she was about to kill him but in this case she didn't make any threatening moves so that was a non sequitur I don't even know what the author was trying to do with that like what kind of an intro is that like she could be dangerous no she's not was that with some out of the way acknowledgement that women can still kick a guy's ass I mean it's true enough but Jake took two teasers so I don't think he needs to worry about anybody I mean anybody without a gun or a bomb but no it's actually just Natalie who is the super sweet attractive redhead love interest who is actually older than Jake Natalie works as a professor at the college so she's she's got a few years on him but the book uses the term older than Jake so many times that I can only picture her being played by like Helen Mirren or Judi Dench we've got another great line on page 59 here Jake's getting yelled at by the campus president the president makes an accusation that jake has been going off on wild-eyed raving and so he responds wild-eyed raving Jake's had it astonished because he was we're dealing with Class A material here folks I don't know if you can see this but this shirt is actually very soft I like this shirt it's a good shirt and it's not until around chapter 10 that we meet our central bad guys the biggest one here central antagonist is a guy named Matthias skur and fosters leaving these Punk's who have been attacking Jake throughout the book he's responsible for all these frankly ridiculous fight scenes and he is assisted by a woman called Lucy of course the woman called Lucy replied oh my god is dumb but the cringe continues of course the woman called Lucy replied but we have other things to do to get ready too besides just testing guns you're right Foster agreed we have other powerful weapons on our side our brains he touched his for it and our hearts his fingertips rests on for a second on his chest those are a higher caliber than any mechanical weapon we might employ and we might test them as well he laughed god I sound pretentious at times don't I you sound like if the Care Bears decided that their stomach lasers weren't enough so they decided to start arming themselves black eyed [ __ ] so this is our villain a man whose dialogue is so flowery and so saccharine it wouldn't be allowed on the bulletin board at a Sunday school we eventually find Jake in his dorm room and he brings up this point Jake had a couple of guns in his dorm room they weren't supposed to be there but he wanted to have them handy anyway he didn't try to take one of them with him tonight though instead as he slipped his jacket on he felt the comforting weight as holding off in one of his pockets the blade when it was opened was a little less than three inches long but in the hands of an expert and Jake was an expert that was more than enough to be deadly now you might think that that's foreshadowing and that the guns will no doubt be useful later on when the bad guys attack and you'd be wrong not for lack on your part of course that's terrible foreshadowing I don't even know what the guns are brought up because we never see them again there's no point you could just not have him at all Jake has them in his dorm room just to be a contrarian because the rules say that he's not allowed to so he wants to have them anyway but why really set those up if you're never going to use them especially because you were dealing with armed terrorists who claimed to have bombs on can busts this entire plot is a mess especially because the description for the folding life right there was was awful and this is another of many violations of show don't tell now show don't tell is a very important lesson I'm sure I don't need to explain that but what would be more interesting the passage I just read or Jake utilizing his knife somehow like maybe he had a dartboard in his room that he was throwing the knife into or maybe you could describe that it was handling his like a kitchen knife differently in the cafeteria because when you do get sufficiently skilled with knives you hold them differently it's one of those subtle differences that would show not only a more developed running style but would also give a little more confidence for your audience because you don't need to explain everything to them y'all are just one with the laziest option in in so many of these what passages we get a bit of description of Jake's family as he's going out with Natalie and previously we got a description apparently his father was a lawyer but traded all that and the family fortune for hookers and blow but the description that the mom is so weak I don't know why this section is even here my mother well my mother married my father I hate to sum up anybody like that but it's all you can say about her when Jake's father fell out from the family Jake abandoned his original last name and went with his mother's last name rivers and he went to live with her for a couple of years you're telling me that he cannot give any detail to his mom beyond that like you didn't even go with something generic like my mom was the best cook around and she kept a great garden I mean that's boring but it's more than this my mom was a life good job now the real reason for this entire section is the author needed a way to bring up uncle Barry because uncle Barry and his wife were killed in an explosion and that will come up later that's that's just gonna be some really cheap lead-in for a third act revealed and if you've already seen Jenny Nicholson's reading to know what it is and it's not impressive so Jake and Natalie go off on another lengthy date and it eventually ends with you guessed it another fight scene Natalie let out a startled OH as Jake gave her a push that sent her staggering back away from him he didn't see or hear any attackers coming from that direction so his instincts told him that that was the safest place for her so not only is Jake a level 100 badass but he just he can predict where the bad guy is gonna be coming from and this is not the first time we've seen these predictive abilities frankly they're written in such a way that I swear he can smell bad guys coming from like a mile off you don't want to have your characters that powerful people like sympathetic heroes if your guy is so powerful that it can never be challenged then it comes off as boring and even if we're going with like one of those overly buffed up super masculine action heroes it's still fun to put them in actual danger and show them actually getting hurt I mean job acclaim from from die hard easy example Schwarzenegger characters from predator got his ass kicked and the rest of his team got killed it's okay to show your heroes not being perfect in fact it's prefered that they not be perfect it makes them more likable anyway another unimpressive fight scene and again the bad guys the same group of bad guys as we discover later on they jumped him and no one brought a gun no one brought a gun to take out this known threat to their plan now this fight scene is written more clumsily than the other ones cuz Jake gets tackled and he lands on the ground but the book chooses to explain it thusly he landed hard on his right hip pain shot through him from the impact with the unrelenting concrete sidewalk and if that wasn't bad enough that fight just drops itself so Jake can go off on a tangent they were after him again even though he had put the last four in the hospital at least he supposed he had there had never been any official word about them as far as he knew when you were writing a well not just a fight scene but really any scene you want to focus on the emotion of the moment you want to make sure that everything carries through naturally and that everything flows a certain way if you're in a fight scene for example you should carry through with the action and the intensity how the surroundings feel and what's going through Jake's head as it relates to the fight itself if he has time to think about some other fight or some other currently unrelated problem the fight loses impact it doesn't sound as intense if Jake can just wonder about anything then the fight probably isn't that intense or worrisome the tangent takes the reader out of the moment and that is always something you want to avoid moments and emotions flow through stories like a river and interruptions like that can break flow carry through with your writing focus during editing on making sure the flow is consistent because that emotional drive will carry your readers through now you can use those breaks effectively if you know what you're doing the red wedding is a great example of this because when I first read that I was so shocked that I had to reread the entire page because I just had to have missed something this book thinks that it's smoothing out the edges but it comes across as a rambling mess well Jake fens them off and they run away and he's left with like no proof that he got attacked so campus police comes in and start harassing him uh more boring really the entire first half of this book is just character introductions and Jake complaining about campus and to an extent it were I mean okay it works functionally for this book but after a while the complaining about everything around campus just gets TD the characters were introduced well enough again it works but in between all of the diatribes and the tangents just get so tiresome it's like we get it you're not happy move on there's actually a section earlier on where Jake admits that between both his grandparents he's got enough money in his family that he doesn't actually have to work he doesn't want to he wants to actually be his own man and make his own money good for him that's that's good character pointed in his favor but if you're this unhappy at this campus go to a better one I mean who cares about the money you've already spent just enrolling and and for room and board here that I think his grandfather was putting the entire bill for that the grandfather who again is a multi-billionaire [Music] so we are introduced to Pierce Pierce is like one of the only good guys on campus because Jake got attacked but Pierce managed to provide video evidence that exonerated Jake from being accused of starting another fight chapter 18 this is where the bad guys put their plot into action so we're introduced to a new character Charlie Hodges the head groundskeeper on the college and one of his one of his workers a guy named over man the entire thing is kind of hilariously mishandled because over man's one of the bad guys there's this bit here that was just so badly written I wasn't sure what the hell was going on at first so over man kills Hodges using his stellar prose here Hodges was able to force a strangled gasp from his tortured throat and then a second later over man's muscles bunched and twisted and Hodges heard a sharp crack that resonated through his brain he had just enough time to realize that it was the sign of his neck breaking before he knew nothing at all and then foster walks in and he has to get rid of the corpse he had to pull the corpses legs around and sort of fold Hodges double to make sure he couldn't be seen by anyone who came into the office at least not right away when you're using a third-person narrative there's a certain degree of professionalism your narrator is expected to maintain using words like sort of really throws that professionalism out and makes the narrator look unprofessional or unsure of what's going on now it can be done if that's the intended effect but I don't think that was the intended effect but you think that's confusing oh well try this one another guy comes in some guy named Torrez and over man kills him that was when that heavy wrenching over man's hand came down hard on the back of Torrez his head and cracked his skull he pitched forward onto his face Foster leaned over him and hit him a couple more times to make sure he was dead now you probably think there are two people in this and that over man is just one of fosters minions and you be wrong foster is over man over man's just his cover name the names are used interchangeably and when I first read that I was so thrown for a loop I had to go back and make sure that I didn't miss something but no I didn't that's just really clumsy writing anyway the rest of fosters crew comes in and they just kill the other groundskeepers and steal their overalls the grim reaper outfits were an attempt to go around and just hide bombs around campus because you're not really going to question what's going on if a groundskeeper is digging something up in a field somewhere and from there all these significant named characters slowly make their way to the Bur Memorial Library Pierce is in there because of a study group being headed by some guy named Fareed Granderson is busy harassing some guy for a bad parking job so he gets in trouble with his boss and gets sent to patrol the library just to get him out of the way it really doctor matumbo is heading into work in the library and jake is going there as well on a study date with Natalie so the whole villain plot is uncovered somewhat unceremoniously as mccreaney is heading through campus on this way to the groundskeepers office because apparently they have a better coffee machine okay whatever and then we get this line he mcrainey new the most efficient way to get anywhere on campus so it didn't take him long to reach the shed like good job I mean aside from the fact that the man works there this just comes across as unnecessary like he knew his way around fantastic he had a basic level understanding of navigation he's not Ryoga from Ranma 1/2 and that's my enemy not for the day also from a brief description of the campus earlier it sounded like the entire thing is really just one straight line from north to south so I don't think you can get lost but again this would be a lot easier solved if we actually had a map to show us anyway McRaney gets the shed and discovers hodges body and that's when he gets jumped by one of the bad guys mccreaney takes a knife wound but does manage to kill the bad guy and radios for help well while that's going on we got Jake and Natalie meeting with each other in the library just before Foster puts his plan into action and huh some more winning dialogue Natalie runs into Jake and says this get over yourself big man you think I have nothing better to do than wait for you no it's just a coincidence that I was walking by here and happened to look up and see you once I did I thought I might as well wait for you so you wouldn't have to look for me hello fellow human I am also a fellow human one thing I really like is how well thought-out and refreshing the dialogue is oh and as they're walking into the library Jake sees Pierce and the rest of his study group being headed by farid who was of course Middle Eastern and Jake just completely drops the ball Jake knew a lot of people would say it was racist of him but whatever he saw somebody like that he always felt himself tense up inside for a second yeah no that's pretty racist of you actually so Jake and Natalie sit down and they discuss Jake's most recent encounter with the president of the campus and during that conversation the president basically threatened Jake to leave because he was causing trouble and the book just gives this limp-wristed defense for Jake yeah I don't have anything against the guy personally we just don't see eye to eye he has this poorly assembled character model but kind of comes off as snobby and holier-than-thou and most like this are small bits of him trying to appear down-to-earth and moral it's more along the lines of sure I hate the guy and I go out of my way to annoy him when I can but I don't hate the guy and I haven't been talking about the politics in this book but Jake does chalk it all up to ideological differences but he just comes across as really unaware of himself when he talks the last thing I want to do is turn to one of those people who filter everything through an ideological lens that and fight scenes are literally all he's done this book I know we haven't listened any example so you'll have to take my word for it because I don't want to get into that but he is such a bloody hypocrite any points he may have earned with me through this entire book he is his law just in this one chapter alone so we skip over to foster as he's putting the final touches on his plan wandering through the library right before he pulls the first trigger and we get a bit of his backstory and we find out why he's going through with his evil plan apparently he had earned an academic scholarship for a full ride to Kelton but a lot of the other students didn't like him their commitment to diversity and equality didn't extend the boys from squalid little oilfield towns like the one Foster came from no matter how smart they were so Mathias foster big bad antagonist of this entire book is a bad guy because he didn't have any friends no look that's sad that sucks I'm I would feel for the guy but Jesus man your plan is such an overreaction I didn't have any friends so I'm gonna hold this entire campus hostage for ransom especially because Foster tries to tout about how smart he is so many times in this book but frankly if he was really that smart he should have figured out that those random [ __ ] opinions don't matter the world was filled with [ __ ] no matter where you went oh my God he's on the where how come so many of the characters in these books that I review like this are have no self-awareness why is that the common thread Mathias Foster was smart always had been it didn't take him long to realize what he had to do become a stock analyst so we get the beginning of fosters little plan here he scattered a bunch of followers and untold amount throughout the campus and they end up taking over six buildings most of them are concentrated in the library with him hold on I almost forgot this line foster goes into a bathroom and we get this line the guy didn't make eye contact with foster since men seldom acknowledge another man's presence in a restroom I mean he's not wrong but is so stupid we didn't need that that's there's no reason for it so he went into the bathroom because that was where a gun was stored for him so he grabs a bag and pulls that out and inside the drawstring bag was a Glock 9-millimeter with a loaded magazine already in the butt plus eight more loaded magazines there were other ammunition caches scattered around the library if they became necessary so now this is a video game where do you think they hit the Easter eggs so Foster walks out fires the has gone a couple times in the air and screams over a crowd that everyone's got to do as they're told otherwise they're gonna die usual bad guys chick we get all the name characters reacting to the the gunshots one way or another most of them just get down and hide Granderson gets knocked out and then we get Jake's response remember he's sitting at a table with Natalie so of his protective instincts kick in when he hears the gunshots so he lunged across the table slid on the papers knocked books and laptop aside and grabbed her the impact toppled her chair over she cried out in surprise Jake twisted as they went down so that he hit the floor first and she landed on top of him instead of the other way around his weight falling on her might have seriously injured her you ramming your 250 pound frame into her might have hurt her but generally speaking everyone gets down on the ground they just follow orders and somewhere not too far away somebody said an obscenity over and over again in a terrified whisper uh-oh now you know shit's gettin serious language the books been relatively profanity free I think we get a damn it and an [ __ ] and that's about it the book is like not exactly meant for kids I don't know why we're not going full force with just a little bit of profanity like random attacks political distracting people getting stabbed that's all fine but you say a naughty word then you've gone too far in the bad guys defense there's a reason I've been saying bad guys because while the book claims that they're terrorists the bad guy Foster rather does claim on page two one that they're not actually terrorists or phonetics even though Jake immediately Falls that up with I thought he claimed he wasn't a terrorist or a fanatic sounds like it to me here's here's where I go on a bit of my own tangents so there is no real universally accepted definition for terrorists the generally accepted definition within the United States code though is I'm paraphrasing slightly here somebody who attacks a noncombatant typically a civilian with the intent of spreading a political message now the thing that people often forget about is yeah terrorism is politically motivated that's why terrorists and spree killers aren't the same thing now what are the bad guys after well they're holding the campus up for ransom foster has his minions in six different buildings holding all the available students that they can't hostage and the intent as foster explains is they're going to get their message out there they're going to contact the other that they're going to use the students use of social media to contact the news and the police and ultimately their parents to say give us a hundred thousand dollars if you want your precious little child to walk out if you're alive now even though foster goes on this political rant about class differences and the like it is ultimately irrelevant to his plan this guy is a terrorist and exactly the same way that Hans Gruber was a terrorist money perish who said we were terrorists this is just a a robbery with a bad disguise and now it's down to the one guy who happens to be inside the building with the bad guys and the training who might be able to stop them so now that earlier reference I made makes sense ladies and gentlemen we are reading the plot to the book nothing lasts forever by Roderick Thorp the book which inspired die hard only this is told so much worse you see Hans Gruber was a clever villain and we do have a book was better episode in the works for that but we're holding it until Christmas so wait on that I'm gonna be using the movie for references here it's it's better known Hans Gruber was a clever villain because he had a contingency plan for just about everything every move the cops are gonna make every move the FBI was gonna make he knew what was going to happen and he used that to fulfill his plan and and it was a good plan honestly a smart villain makes for a better story he just lost because there was a wild card he couldn't account for with John McClane just happening to be in the building Foster likes to go on about how smart he is but frankly the genius extent of his plan is he came up with a large-scale robbery that's that's it Gruber came up with a way to get past the lock that could not be gotten past and that was awesome Foster has a number of guns that's it but it looks even worse for him because unlike Gruber Foster knows about the wild card in his mist he knows that Jake rivers is a potential liability he knows that having him there in the building is a bad thing not only does he not go out of his way to try to hunt rivers down I'm just gonna spoil this early Natalie is Lucy his own henchman lured him to this spot foster built in his own Achilles heel you could have had him killed elsewhere you could have had one of your thugs on the many times that Jake was attacked actually pull a gun you could have had Natalie lead Jake off campus somewhere you could have gone down to one of the academic buildings you could have had Natalie betray Jake and shoot him in the back of the head while they were on the ground inside the library so while diehard became one of America's favorite action movies of all time this is doomed to sink into obscurity because there's your Vil is an idiot the plan is doomed to fail from the start it's really not that clever he'll the bad guys from the book from bad guys from this book we're actually terrorists there's a reason I've been using the term bad guy to describe Foster and all of his cronies because that's all they really reach they don't really get that level of like terrorists because they don't really have political aims they've got political complaints but that's largely irrelevant to their motivation here they're motivated by greed they're at worst guilty of using class warfare as an example or an excuse for their violence but that's it the author just saw die hard and thought oh I can do that and completely failed it shows how badly they were prepared for this siege the bad guys in this book are just a bunch of stoners who saw die hard and thought it was a good idea it's entire thing sucks so because we don't get it enough elsewhere in the book we can need a reminder from Jake that Foster is a smart intimidating felon he was well-spoken Jake thought probably smart and well-educated too well you couldn't really tell that by the way somebody talked in the service he had run across guys who sounded like they didn't have enough brain cells to rub together yet who were actually some of the most intelligent people he had ever met however his instincts told him that this man no dummy and that made him even more dangerous in the long run the entire paragraph well is that a waste of time the first sentence alone settled it you got to keep these things concise because otherwise if you keep going on like that you lose focus and if you lose focus the audience can't follow you as easily it just looks dumb but we get very much the same tangential nonsense in the next chapter when dr. matumbo reacts to the the gunshots see he was away from everything else he was up on the third floor where the bad guys didn't have easy access so he's really by himself at the moment but then we get this he had no idea what was going on but he had heard several muffled gunshots from one of the lower floors at least he believes they were gunshots he had never heard a gun go off in real life only on television and in the movies and he knew that those were created by special effects departments and might not be what firearms sounded like when they were going off in real life he was pretty sure someone was shooting though again if you lose focus the readers lose interest it's covered in so many books you think they pick that up by now so the bad guys are running around floor by floor inside the library checking like all the offices and storage rooms to look for any other hostages that can take they wander into the room that matumbo is in and he knocks over a shelf on top of one of the bad guys takes his gun and then scurries into the the ceiling tiles to escape which is fine my question though is what kind of layout does this library have that's actually a problem that just gets worse throughout the rest of the book because everything is compartmentalized everything is is sectioned off so sound carries only so well yeah libraries can have separate study rooms or AV rooms or things like that but for the most part in my experience libraries are pretty large open buildings like to the point where you should not have so many hiding places but the book apparently there are like different actions for everything and like the entire building is built more like an office building rather than a library I don't understand what the architecture is supposed to be like cuz this just sounds so not normal there are doors everywhere oh I almost missed over this one there's uh there's another typo in the book keep in mind this is this is not like a self-published book like what oniisan had typos dolor in that garbage but I can understand why this is professionally edited there is actual publication data into this book and there are still typos like this one moving as quietly as he could he had hurried around the bookshelves until he reached a spot where he couldn't see seen easily from the entrance somebody was paid to go over and find problems like that and somebody missed that line I've just haven't used by it so matumbo gets away we got another scene with Pierce and it ends with him thinking this then suddenly for some reason he thought about Jake rivers Marie Anderson gets a scene and after taking a full page to wake up after getting knocked out he gets this stunning revelation his vision cleared some and it could tell what he was looking at at such close range it was a floor tile Granderson knew a floor tile when he saw one well thank God the library wasn't carpeted otherwise he would be completely lost so Granderson spends several pages laying face down on the floor not moving and apparently thinks of himself as this book's John McClain because we get this line all those on the outside chief mcrainey the Greenleaf cops who had been too good to hire him the state police probably even the FBI they would all be freaking out about now what they didn't know was that they had a secret weapon on the outside a secret weapon named Cal Granderson he's gonna die probably so McRaney wakes up in an ambulance and he's recovering somewhat from the earlier fight scene when he runs into a guy named Hartwell who is the chief of the local police they draw on the situation from the outside thinking about how bad things are and they get a more a broader oversight of the whole situation the six buildings that are currently being locked down by the bad guys and they also state that there has been a bomb threat made within the buildings how many and where have not been disclosed but they're wisely staying back until they can get some backup Hartwell sprinkles stood out even more than usual because his face was drained of color he shook his head and said seems to me like the only way is if some of those hostages are able to get the upper hand but even if they do that there's still a chance that madman will set off the bombs unless somebody stops him mccreaney said he suddenly wondered where Jake rivers was right now [Music] today the FBI shows up and someone from the Department of Homeland Security but they ultimately mean nothing the FBI guy gives a little bit of support the DHS lady summoning Teresa Vega has no reason to be in this book because she does nothing she's really just there to complain and act like kind of a [ __ ] so I think this was the author's attempt to make fun of the Department of Homeland Security I can't think of any other reason for her to be in this book the the FBI otherwise covers us well enough especially because Vega drops one of the dumbest lines in the book Vega said he's bluffing about the bombs now when you learn how to deal with terrorist threats and bomb threats what are the earlier lessons they give you is don't assume the bomb threat is fake you carry through as if it's real until you get definitive proof that it's not because in the slim chance that you are wrong and it's real and it goes off people get hurt in a preventable situation that you screwed up because you made a baseless assumption oh but vague is not the only one because Jake on multiple occasions says that the bombs are just probably fake anyway I mean at least the FBI guy has the common sense to point out that they don't know that and they're not going to run the risk just in case but what do you know it turns out that the bombs are real one of the bombs goes off but it's used mostly just to prove that the bombs are real so they the bad guys had one bomb set off to the side purely for the purposes of demonstration [Music] now yeah that's kind of dumb it's made worse by the fact that they only have three bombs total so you used up one of them and it was going to be a camp a complete waste no matter what you did these are stupid bad guys anyway Jake gets pulled up to foster and they have a quick face-to-face confrontation when all of a sudden Jake grabs Foster and it looks like he's about to get the upper hand when all of a sudden someone pulls a gun on him from up close and it's Natalie and oh my god we get this incredible twist right here the leader was remaining his senses after that punch from Jake he turned his head enough so that Jake could see the triumphant grin on his face as he said good work Lucy completely ignore the fact that I gave this twist away earlier but I actually kind of liked this twist functionally speaking because we don't get any real connection that natalie is Lucy and Lucy is Natalie it works it's something that wouldn't really work as well in a movie but because the book is able to admit just the right information the twist functions just fine for the first five seconds before you start thinking about it because why is Jake still on campus why did you allow this known threat to your plans this very well established threat to your plans to stay on campus you were employing a double agent and you never utilized her this whole Natalie as Lucy thing serves only to get Foster out of this one scuffle right here a scuffle which would not have happened in the first place if Jake was not escorted directly to foster at gunpoint he kind of just shot him in the head right there not that that would ultimately help foster but we'll get to that in a bit so the FBI make the move and they turn off all the power on campus cutting out all the lights in the library and even though this whole event is taking place in the late morning which isn't as true matically because darkness outside kind of employees fear so you've got all that light beaming in inside it looks sunny and happy which is a cosmetic difference in what you're going for but that that's getting a little too and a lot of will even for me anyway FBI cut the power and everything gets plunged into darkness in the basement of the library which the book points out with excruciating detail it wasn't like the lower floor of the library was plunged into Stygian darkness when the power went out there were no windows of course since it was below grad level but the opening where the escalators came down from the ground floor lit in light from above and since there were a lot of windows up there it meant that a considerable amount of light slanted down to the lower level but the difference was so sudden so unexpected that for a couple of seconds everyone down there including Jake couldn't see much of anything you know there's a rule about explaining the obvious things and not doing it exposition dumps are sometimes necessary but this is not one of them like we don't need an explanation why the basement of a building doesn't have windows the light from the phone in his left hand splashed over Jake who slowed down but only for a second just long enough to grab a heavy book from the end of a shelf he was passing he flung the thick volume at the gunman as hard as he could but Jake does manage to disarm one of the gunmen and starts fighting back with it Jake plucks the dead man's gun from the nerveless fingers thrusts his arm under the man's arm and triggered twice as the pistol Jake had just liberated belch fire three times there is so much nonsense in that sentence that I cannot process all of it so you know how the book detailed the campus and laid the building's out early on well it's all worthless if you thought Jake was gonna go from building to building freeing people no he doesn't he stays in the library for the rest of the book with the exception of like the last chapter for the resolution it is such a complete waste I don't I don't know why especially because if he got out and got to his dorm he had access to his guns the guns that he keeps in his closet apparently that never come up why were they introduced but Jake kind of stumbles around inside the library eventually running into dr. matumbo and oh my god this is stupid that madman is gonna blow us all to kingdom come the professor said that's what he wants us to believe Jake said that might not actually be the case even though one explosion went off that doesn't mean there are actually more bombs you are an idiot sure he was crazy enough to blow up one bomb but there's no way he could do it again Jake is a genuine idiot again you assume the worst-case scenario Jake was in the army shouldn't he have like some ided training especially because he actually pull up a bomb why would you assume here the only one God you deserve to die at this point so we got another clumsy rioting attempt to that I just wanted to bring up here when Jake takes down another bad guy with dr. Mutombo in in tow and we get these lines he Jake check for a pulse and found one the guy was just out cold not dead and then dr. matumbo asks is is he he's alive Jake said so this is one of those times when repetition really is not your friend you see you've already established that the guy was alive and then he was establish again that the guy was alive I'm starting to think that Jon stones were involved in running the script for Suicide Squad a better way to go about that scene would be for Jake to lean down check for a pulse and then have dr. matumbo ask is he dead and Jake would then say he's alive no prior establishment about the guy's status just the quick verbal confirmation at that point you're not giving information more than once if you do that it looks like you're treating your audience like they're morons we are not in the Dickens era where you paid by the word stop wasting space then again this whole book is a waste of space but while Jake is kicking ass inside the library the FBI and McRaney gets some glimmer of hope as a new figures introduced this late into the book [Music] and this singular action hero decides to casually walk through the police barricade into campus to single-handedly take out the bad guys in all these other buildings by God at least have the decency to tell me your name mcrainey exploded the stranger paused and looked back it won't do you any good he said but it's Barry Barry Rivera but you can call me dog just dog and this is the introduction of just dog I admit I'm stealing that joke from Jenny Nicholson but it works so well because every time he brings up his name of dog he repeats it with just dog also he gives his real name bearer and Rivera gee it's almost like Jay's dead uncle's name Barry rivers hmm that's weird [Music] it would have been nice to have an ar-15 or something like that in addition to the two nine-millimeter semi-automatic s-- but a man worked with the tools that he had you have guns in your closet why aren't you wishing you had some of those why aren't you attempting to go and get them why aren't you reflecting on the fact that you have guns I mean do you have an ar-15 in your closet or since you were in the Army and you're just wishing why don't you wish you had an actual automatic weapon like an m4 or an m16 or something I'm pretty sure the author at this point has forgotten that he has a closet full of guns anyway Jake makes his way up a few more stairs and comes across a door that's not locked but barred from the inside it wasn't locked he had heard the latch click he wasn't sure that stairwell doors even could be locked since the stairs served as the building's emergency exit but it wasn't opening that was for sure which meant the gunman on this floor had done something to keep anybody from coming up the stairs and taking them by surprise which was exactly what Jake had intended to do here who were explaining things again so he leaves dr. matumbo in charge of guarding a few extra hostages in a small room with a single gun basically with the instructions I've shoot anyone who walks through this door and then Pierce walks up and joins him the back of the book explains that Jake has to school his classmates hold on but to fight back he needs to enlist his fellow classmates to school these special snowflakes in the not so liberal art of war he doesn't do anything with his classmates it Pierce follows him around for a few minutes and then Jake just leaves him behind to guard more hostages and he is still doing this what about the bombs I think that's mostly a bluff on Foster's part Jake said one went off you dolt why would you assume you are safe you you absolute walnut so we go back to foster he's reflecting on how things are slowly devolve around him and he goes on a slight tangent looking back on it now he knew he should have had Lucy Natalie there was no need for code names now Jake rivers during one of the many times when she had had the chance yeah you should have you complete idiot and that's another thing that I forgot to mention about the whole Lucy Natalie thing why did she have a code name in the first place there was never a need for it the only reason that existed was just to surprise the readers and that's it I mean there was never any kind of clever subterfuge that they were playing with and there was never a need to hide her identity from the rest of the faculty there or anything like that there was no communication at all that would have caused any kind of alarm there the most I can think of is covering Natalie's identity from any FBI guys that may have been listening into Foster's plan there was one FBI guy who was undercover with Foster who got discovered like early on in the book that I didn't bother bringing up because it was largely irrelevant but even then the the FBI are not so dumb that they cannot look at this woman and think hey she looks a lot like that other redheaded professor on campus cuz you know red hair is not exactly common but of course Jake going around getting rid of fosters men floor-by-floor is causing a bit of a headache for him rivers son of a-- i knew that guy was gonna maclean us mathias we should have killed him when we had the chance just because you reference diehard does not mean you are not ripping off diehard you cannot use the omage excuse you are blatantly lifting from better material also watch the profanity language so Jake and Pierce run in to clear a room and they apparently run into a few civilians who are just hiding out and we get so much detail a middle-aged woman of the graying brown hair rushed at Jake as soon as he stepped out of the stairwell he had to restrain the impulse to point the pistol at her it was like one of those drills where you moved through a fake village and cardboard cutouts popped out without warning giving you only a second to decide if they were innocent civilians or legitimate targets see this goes back to the professional narrator discussion from earlier you shouldn't have your pros come across like that that's the way you talk to a buddy that's not the way you tell a story it's different again you can have that work as a narration tool but that's not what the book is aiming for that's just sloppy oh and then Jake tries to calm down the civilians by sounding poignant but he just sounds pretentious that terrible man said he and his friends were going to kill all of us if they didn't get what they wanted that was the idea Jake said but we all have something to say about that the bad guys don't win unless we let them cut uh cringe so Jake leaves Pierce behind to guard this civilians they just rescued and they have a little back and forth when Jake drops this line never mind just know that labels like liberal and conservative don't mean much when you're fighting for your life and the lives of innocent people good point but Jake's other thoughts haven't reflected this so far if he had really come together with someone across the aisle like Pierce this line would have hit home a lot harder as the characters realized that political bickering is [ __ ] and isn't worth much in the end however Jake's entire characterization up to this point could pretty much be summed up as angry political bickering so yeah out of context while that is a good thought and context in the larger context of this book it means nothing because there is nothing else in the book reflecting that he's not leading anybody on the other side of the aisle he's walking around with them in tow like they're lost puppies and then he leaves them behind to guard like a bunch of civilians that's it he's not rushing in a combat with them now if he does do that later on with Cal but frankly that's such a character twist from Granderson's original character that frankly is just out of character but before he leaves he does give us one more stupid line at least I've whittled down the odds quite a bit now's the time to go after Foster while he's weakened what do you mean by while he's weakened you're talking about him like he's the final boss in an RPG are you better open that he's not otherwise he's gonna definitely have a second form maybe a third oh but here's here's the real crime of this book while Jake is going around clearing the library and there's so much focus there we had to consider what's going on with the other five buildings and that ultimately comes down to nothing do you remember just dog well he's going around clearing the other buildings like he's going for a speedrun achievement with four of the six gunmen down that left just to Malthus power they couldn't understand how the old man had even managed to get in here let alone kill Carlos and the other three in less time than it took to talk about it but speaking of video game achievements just dog has got to have like an aimbot on or something because the old bastard in question fired a single shot that sizzled past the hostages right ear and into the open mouth of the gunman hanging onto her the bullet shattered the man's spine and dropped him so fast never had a chance to pull the trigger on his own gun every time you use an aimbot freddy wong cries all of my references are ancient and obscure yeah we get some weird backstory to who just dog was apparently he was like a legend in the bureau a long time ago and I'm talking about going back 30 years or more when I was just starting out in the Bureau we used to hear rumors about a guy who went by the codename dog nobody knew who he was or even if he really existed dog legendary CIA spook or mysterious FBI myth this is look trying too hard to be cool again especially because the FBI doesn't work like that somebody that awesome would hit agency-wide recognition like the coast guard badass who jumped on the submarine guess what you get when you mix your pre-workout with your coffee the other buildings become so irrelevant that dog clears one building by himself and then another that we never get to read about all within one chapter dawg Vega repeated with a disgusted snort that's all just dog just dog it was Graham's turn to repeat something as he softly said under his breath just talk you know the book doesn't actually reveal is that just dog is the shorthand his real name is Justus dog [Music] and because justice dog is clearing these other buildings so efficiently there's no tension and therefore there is no real purpose in the larger scheme of the narrative in an action scene you want the the high states to really feel like they're there dramatic and people are actually in danger I in the end of diehard McLain was hurt he was bleeding all over the place he was completely out of it he felt like he was actually in some degree of risk especially because the bad guys were largely unscathed this yeah got a bunch of wannabes playing around with guns I'm not worried about them they're pathetic two buildings got cleared in one chapter why should I care about them anyway Jake goes down he starts thinking to himself about the situation he runs into matumbo tells him to take all of his civilians and go upstairs to where Pierce has his civilians and they'll have a more fortified front and really just have a larger collection of people that die if someone throws a grenade in there but anyway Jake gives orders to go upstairs and gather up any guns and ammo from any of the people that he killed on the way down nobody moved to accomplish that grisly shore Jake glared them and managed to hold in the caustic comments he wanted to make about snowflakes in pajama boys but Jake I thought terms like liberal and conservative didn't matter when innocent lives were on the line [ __ ] hypocrites Jake started down the stairs hoping matumbo wouldn't pass out if he found himself facing trouble again or worse try to reason with fosters bunch you couldn't reason with thieves and killers yes that's why hostage negotiator is not a real job title he's the only [ __ ] dog who's good enough to win a [ __ ] pants we got any slight deviation as Natalie decides to try to join Jake's side but she gets followed by another henchman she gets shot Jake shoots the henchman and then Natalie has some heart felt oh hi I didn't want to do this anymore cuz I love you because of course she does all the hotties are hot for Jake's hot hotness well Natalie passes out she chance of surviving whatever but this is last we see of her she passes out and then Jake tries to close the chapter on an epic one-liner now I need to get back to what I started he reached out touched Natalie's shoulder for a second she appeared to be unconscious now killing the rest of those sons of [ __ ] done I mean any a chapter with a cool one-liner is a good decision and it helps hype up the final fight scene but this is like this sixth time the book has done this and I don't care anymore I just want it to be done you don't want to overly rely on the same trick or and over because the it grows stale oh let's see father gets in contact with justice dog and he tries to blow up one of the buildings to kill justice dog but super puppy is super and was not in the building when that other bomb went off and Granderson who originally had planned to be this one man army badass to single-handedly go through and save everybody has done nothing for this entire fight scene the entire action scene of like however long this has been going on like about this much of the book he has done nothing [Music] I mean this is been going on for like an hour hour and a half and Granderson has done Jack I honestly thought this could have been a really good scene because Granderson is is very much Jake's opposite but he has somewhat good intentions sort of distantly not really I don't know what I'm saying here it would have been cool if the two had bridged their differences to fight off against a bigger threat but we don't get that in this book the two butt heads the entire way until Granderson eventually gets himself shot like this elevator opens up and and he gets mortally wounded so he decides to just make himself a distraction so Jake can go out and finally take out foster that's cool that's that's throwing your life away for something noble but it could've been so much more you you have that opportunity and you wasted it Granderson doesn't even get to take anybody out you just kind of like goes down as a noisy distraction and that's it you couldn't even let them have that could you Johnstone we got another short scene of just dog but we get another in a long list of descriptions of him being described as someone who moved like a man much younger it's getting tiring now I get what the book is trying to do it's setting things up for a twist later on and I'm gonna spoil now cuz I'm gonna forget about it later on this justice dog is actually the second incarnation of justice dog because just like the Dread Pirate Roberts justice dog is using someone else's title and that's four buildings cleared so yeah this justice dog is like some younger guy who stole the title I don't know how he knew about it but it's it's he's like some trucker from nowhere so before long Jake is taken out all of fosters minions and it's just Foster on the basement level and Jake does everything that he can to stay stealthy and silent so he can sneak up on Foster he moved as quietly as possible not wanting Foster to be able to track him by sound Foster would be doing the same thing he knew keeping quiet and trying get the drop on him but maybe foster didn't have the patience for that because he called rivers you hear me so you established that Foster is being stealthy and then you establish that Foster is not being stealthy stop doing that the book just keeps bouncing back and forth between mutually exclusive ideas like that set up one idea and stick with it that the back-and-forth is getting annoying and oh god I hope you guys are ready for this because it's a slew of stupid dialogue well oh that's gonna change foster went on it won't be long now before the big body count will belong to me I can't blow up the whole campus I might as well admit that now but you know what Jake I can call you Jake can't I since we're about to be blown to atoms together I can blow this library sky-high the detonator is right here in my hands Jake all I have to do is push it then do it you pansy like you go on and on about it I can do it I get I think he's trying to instill some degree of fear and get Jake to beg but that's stupid and you're wasting time all you're doing is you're giving him an opportunity to come up and beat you in combat don't fight fair you [ __ ] you're the bad guy you're not supposed to fight fair but Jake does whatever he can to convince foster not to blow them up if you don't want to be taken alive forget about blowing anything up put that detonator aside step out and face me just the two of us foster laughed head-to-head mano a mano just like the showdown in every bad book ever written and every bad movie every made you mean like this one because that's exactly what happens next way to call yourself out book and oh my god this fight scene so Jake gets on one of those ladders that moves around on top of shelves and flings himself down using it to try to springboard onto Foster jumps on Foster the detonator goes scattering away so they've got a fight hand a hand and then we get this foster fought like a wildcat he was strong wiry and had blinding speed jig was extremely fast especially for such a big man but foster was even quicker he got a hand on Jake's face and gouge at his eyes enough that Jake was blinded momentarily he came up on his knees clawing at his eyes with the back of his left hand foster left to his feet and clawed at the pistol Eddie had stuck behind his belt earlier Jake's vision cleared enough for him to see that he reached for the gun at the small at his back drawing faster than he'd ever had sometimes real life played out like a book or a movie final shootout so Jake gets shot in the chest but foster gets shot in the neck and dies in a pool of his own blood so we get the resolution the terrorists were all killed justice dog was a good super puppy and he cleared the other five buildings doing a majority of the work I mean Jake is treated as the central hero but frankly compared to today everything that justice dog did Jake did nothing and the campus understandably offers councilors for the people who were taken hostage and for anyone who needed to talk to them but the book kind of like gets a little demeaning about that counselors provided by the college we're overworked as they tried to help the students deal with the trauma they had gone through this has been a macro aggression and some of those already easily triggered snowflakes would never get over it that was the trouble with being a snowflake you melted if things got the least bit warm [ __ ] they were held at gunpoint and had the threat of being blown up by bombs I think a little PTSD is warranted dr. matumbo resigned apparently planning a trip to France Pierce decides to do his own studying it breaks away from the rest of the study group and Jake sits down and reflects on a few things with McCraney cuz apparently he was given a plaque for his success at least it's not a damn statue oh yes and then justice dog walks up and meets them and we get the tremendous twist that you never saw coming I've known who you are for a long time Jake and then name's not really Rivera although I've gone by named for almost as long it's rivers just like our mother's name and your grandfather big Joe's name Jake stopped and frowned over at the older man what the hell are you saying he demanded I'm Barry rivers I'm your uncle dead at that that at that I'm born Jake is of course very skeptical about this cuz you know his his uncle's dead now I was a little disappointed by that twisted because going in I II thought that justice dog was actually his father yes the dad who went out and got addicted to hookers and blow but wouldn't that have been like a better twist I mean instead he drawn this nothing to reveal Oh your uncle isn't actually dead that was a mob thing that turned into nothing your dad never stopped loving you he had to go undercover because it was part of this secret government mission thingy no instead he just the blast tore up his face which is why he doesn't look like the uncle that jake remembers he was apparently a trucker for a while which allowed him to maintain this new identity and travel around kicking ass and taking names whenever the government requested it like he was kind of given carte blanche to go instill justice wherever he wanted the way the book presents it it's kind of like Ethan Hawke going around getting notes your mission should you choose to accept it and every once in a while justice dog would you say yeah I don't accept it I don't want to do this one this was a really stupid twist since it wasn't built off anything there was no need in the larger scheme of things to have Barry here or to include the other buildings so what is this just some way to get Jake into some new mysterious careers he wanders into the sunset also why is Barry Rivers using Barry Rivera as a car name it's the guy a complete idiot you can't just spell your name a little differently I think it counts as an uncrackable cover story Barry's not even the real dog so that whole story was a waste of time - Barry semi-retired so the government just calls on him every once in a while and they need a super agent and if he feels like it he jumps into action I'm semi-retired again the government calls on me to do a job now and then and if I see something that interests me I'm free to poke into it justice dog your government needs you I don't wanna damn it so yeah the book ends with justice dog offering Jake a job as a secret government killer person I don't know what that job title would be and the final chapter ends like this and I would take this a lot more seriously if Jake didn't suddenly sound like a six year old dog that's your code name right yeah do I get a code name Barry squinted over at him and said you're as big as a horse how about horse no Jake said shaking his head not horse that's not a good code name he thought about it now stallion maybe I don't think so Barry clapped a hand on his nephews shoulder as they walked off into the pleasant autumn afternoon we'll work on it I don't know man if you want to go with a horse named why not trigger that's our show everybody if you'll excuse me I'm gonna go drink a bucket of bleach [Music] so a thoroughly draining time this book was a mess from start to finish alright add a couple of notes that I was not able to get to one chapter in and this book really feels like it was written in an anger it's like one of those letters you write to a family member so you can vent your frustrations but you never mail it and you can definitely write from anger that can actually be a very powerful emotion to use the problem is this this wasn't written well if the anger wasn't utilized properly this didn't come from any kind of indignation or sense of justice this was done out of spite with the intent of pissing people off the outline of this book sounds like a joke like one of those fake movies from Grand Theft Auto the author writes the characters a lot of presupposition makes for a lot of weak foreshadowing when either the content is predicted so accurately and redundantly or when it's completely irrelevant so oftentimes what happens is somebody would make a prediction usually Jake about some outcome and either it was completely irrelevant and never showed up like when Natalie was introduced or it was a pinpoint accuracy like immediately thereafter is like in several of the fight scenes when Jake could just feel a punch coming and a punch was coming right there it you've got to have your foreshadowing last at least a little longer than a couple of milliseconds Jake thinks everything is black and white not shades of grey makes the argument for it anyway and the book is probably gonna try to prove him right it does I don't see him as not being a static character so Jake stays consistent the entire way he doesn't have the character arc and you can write an action movie like that it can work he doesn't have to grow necessarily if the world around him grows the problem is neither Jake nor the world grows a good example of a static character would be Mack was from gladiator because while he doesn't really change the world around him does something over the course of the story should change whether it be a character or situation or the world or whatever that doesn't happen in this book this is stupid I mean even Michael Bay gets that right sometimes come on man you're not even trying trigger warning unnecessarily restricts itself and limits its audience because it's not trying to convince anyone to see things from another side or to counter any arguments it's there to mock political opponents and you're never gonna convince anyone that they're wrong by mocking them especially not in this day and age there is no depth in this book everything is surface level at best there are no layers to the characters or their motivations anywhere everything is laid bare of the beginning and that makes the story Hollow and uninteresting it's predictable because an experienced reader will know more or less exactly what will happen by page 100 there are no surprises or twists to be had there because there isn't the slightest inkling of complexity to be found and the two twists that were there Nataly being Lucy and justice dog being Jake's uncle neither of them actually led to anything I've already explained both in detail but they were both stupid weak twists this book is at best incompetent and lazy while the book has no depth could at least make for a decent popcorn thriller some easy but dumb story you can turn your brain off for and enjoy well not really the politics Oh him pissed it into your face that it takes away from any zany fun that you might have if you agree with the politics you might still enjoy on a base level but the writing is sloppy the characters are flat and the politics come before anything else a good political thriller should have the politics mix in with the plot this book's plot is just a backstory to emphasize the politics Granderson threatens a guy and is completely trigger-happy but it's not clear if he's doing this out of fear or rage if it's rage he's weak willed and deserves to be fired if it's fear he's a coward and deserves to be fired this is a no-win situation for the author as far as character building goes because the character isn't aware of his own actions he's a flag character who cannot exist out of outside of a 2d archetype Granderson is an intentionally stupid person and not just by author design the cognitive dissonance he displays is electrifying and while his mental gymnastics six are meant to be satirical and fashion it doesn't work because there's no lesson to learn at one point he actually tries to in a paraphrasing here I won't when he actually tries to harp the lesson people should follow the law unless they shouldn't that's on page 189 if anyone wants to double-check my work author details how many rounds are inside of the shooters gun uses too much detail when you break it down like that specifically you look like you're treating your readers like they're idiots there's a bit of figuring out that they need to do on their own plus you're wasting valuable time with extraneous detail the book is so overt and heavy-handed with its political messaging that it comes off as presumptuous and kind of hypocritical like it has a clear message but it's so blinded in its own ideology they have a can't see where it's logical shortcomings are Jake at one point wonders if the terrorist is being rude because of its difference in skin color it's so convenient than in this one single building Jake and his crew can fire multiple rounds and never get detected by the bad guys justice dog clears his second building in one chapter we don't even see the second one at all we're just told about it the authors set up too big of a story and couldn't carry through with it all of it now he has to bring in some tact on super here and help save the day and draw focus away from Jake this necessarily makes Jake look less impressive by comparison this is why Dumbledore had to die in book 6 if he had lived the reader could have shrugged and said yeah but Dumbledore could have saved the day if it got too bad this was just weak planning and weaker follow-through the author should have contained everything to a single building instead of a library that should have used a classroom or an admin building the fight scenes are really weak in the second half something happens it's dark and Jake emerges as the victor a lot of the problem with the fight scenes the second half of the book and the writing style in general is that the author doesn't focus on what needs to be focused on every minut tangent that can be taken or described is it becomes very tiresome to read since you have so many things to keep track of and very little of it actually matters it feels like you're over prepping for a test for a class that you hate I cannot sum up the author's writing style better than chef how the heart and the soul but you don't have that this was a really stupid twist since it wasn't built off anything there was no need in the larger scheme of things to have Barry here or to include the other buildings [Music] book ends with obvious job offer from Barry to Jake weak sauce all over the place glad this is done while the best book of the lot that of read for these long reviews it still sucks there's potential to be had but the author was too politically motivated and wasn't clever enough to make it work the scenes were overly detailed the characters were hilariously flat and Jake constantly danced along the lines of being a Gary Stu now we just need a buddy team up with him Mitch Rapp and Jack Reacher so this is garbage and no people wrong I'm I'm as pro-america you know [ __ ] ya where the nice big hat shoot had done and drink some Mountain Dew Liberty brew which I was going to do but I ran at a time because I've got to be up for work in six hours and I don't need the caffeine right now so we've got to drop that joke unfortunately now I may have made the mistake of letting all of you pick my next book but that's not gonna happen next time cuz I've already decided on my my next long book review you see somebody else made the mistake of getting on my radar somebody else decided to try to not bully call me out but kind of said that I was just some no-talent kid who was gonna fade into obscurity well I'm going to take you up on your challenge Norman I'm going to read your awful book so I hope you all can join me next time for Empress Theresa [Laughter] I don't feel safe

Channel: KrimsonRogue

Views: 435,558

Rating: 4.9509802 out of 5

Keywords: Trigger Warning, Johnstone, College, Jake Rivers, Western, Die Hard, Action, Book, Review, Stupid, Robbery

Id: WRBHW3T3Wvw

Length: 89min 55sec (5395 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 24 2019