Theresa is Boring! A Book Review of Empress Theresa | Part 1

ladies and gentlemen this is my nightmare I was not ready for this book this this is amazing I have so many tabs in this book I have so many tabs it is actually distorting how thick the book is Wow I thought I had seen bad writing I mean I've seen bad writing but this one is fascinating in how awful it is the the characters are somehow less than one-dimensional the plot doesn't exist there are a multitude of typos typically not misspelled words although there are some a lot of them are just basic punctuation errors there is a tab on all but two pages of this book I've never seen anything like this I'm actually at kind of a loss for words for how awful this truly is hello back here so yes congratulations on EC on who you're no longer the worst author I have ever read you know might not look like it but this is actually really comfortable so you get the arm wrists just the right height so Empress Theresa by Norman Bhutan there's a bit of internet history to it I'm not gonna be going too much into that if you want to check out some more information some background on that I recommend you check out the down the rabbit hole episode that Fred Knudsen did I think that's how you pronounce his name I am sorry if I'm wrong the short version is Norman as I will be calling him is incapable of any kind of constructive criticism or receiving constructive criticism he has no idea how to compose a story or characters or pacing or anything this this book was more difficult than anything I did through the entirety of my college career I I genuinely mean that Norman has taken the case that not only is his book a great book it may be one of the best books of all time while I'm certainly open to the idea of there being layers within a book that I might not enjoy or certain contexts that I might not get the first time I read something this doesn't even reach surface level like apparently the entire book is supposed to be so mamaj to Joan of Arc and that does come up at one point and then gets immediately sidestepped look I'm not sure where he was trying to go with this he wanted to make some sort of a strong independent main character which I mean is certainly a worthy goal but he aimed for Wonder Woman and we got Lucy the crackhead who lives under the stairs so because Norman won't pay attention to anything that I have to say why would I make this review there there are a lot of notes that I didn't bother taking because I wanted to get this review out before too long my goal is to get it before Christmas I'm filming this on December 28th so really there should be more tabs here but I try to put myself on a timeline now something to consider when you're reviewing any kind of medium frankly is the target audience you you do not judge a kid's show the same way you would judge Citizen Kane or something highbrow and that's very important because if this were a young adult novel it would get so much leeway the problem though is Norman on his own website has gone out of his way to say this is not a young adult book which means I get to hold it to a higher standard and I get this [ __ ] all over it but then there's the man how Norman got on my radar in the first place and it wasn't just the down the rabbit-hole video Empress Theresa was always one of those titles that it was eventually gonna get to I decided to move it up on my timetable because someone challenged him someone linked me or told pulled Norman about me and linked my Twitter to him and said this is crimson rogue's Twitter he has over 10,000 subs on his YouTube channel this was written a while ago he reviews books by independent and unknown authors asked him to review your book prove me wrong and all the other so-called trolls wrong norman chose to respond thusly I checked her link he's just another dumb kid who doesn't know anything and will be forgotten he's totally immersed in fourth rate media that's his whole life Theresa avoids the media she won't even talk to reporters she achieves much [ __ ] I am sitting on a throne made of books you're a penny means jack [ __ ] to me heavy is the head that wears two paper crown they say those who are not worthy of sitting upon the paper throne gets thousands of paper cuts it also really doesn't help that Norman refers to Theresa like she's a real girl because that sounds a little creepy that's the kind of talk that wouldn't be out of place inside of a padded cell he says I could girl Theresa doesn't talk to reporters Teresa's a good girl and although I do not encourage this which is why I'm not showing any of the names of the people talking to Norman he has a reputation of responding poorly to criticism routinely and I don't want to encourage that seriously just he's not worth the energy leave him alone he has even gone out of his way to cold me personally a troll while I admit I do enjoy the occasional bit of teasing now and then I don't consider what I do trolling I'm actually here trying to educate people at least in part so they can improve their own writing because sometimes holding up a bad example is a great teaching method and oh my god Empress Theresa is glorious for bad examples because it's not just that Empress Theresa has a lot of mistakes it has a lot of compounded mistakes there there are things in here that are not just wrong but are wrong in weird complicated ways but you'll you'll see more of what I'm talking about in a bit to start though I did want to talk about the cover now I normally don't talk about covers but Norman apparently made his while one should not judge a book by it's cover both literally and figuratively I think you can do that here you have Teresa standing out front blank face with a thousand-yard stare and her hair's down while she's in uniform which is a blatant violation of uniform policy her fingers are weirdly long everything's just offset a little bit like look here at the tie that doesn't look right and to steal a joke from other people it looks like Norman has never seen a boob before I'd also like to point out the men who are I'm guessing doing target practice behind her they all look like they've been copied and pasted what concerns me is that they're all doing this in rows so there are people behind other people shooting guns towards those people I would not feel safe on that range who's in charge of this and apparently this cover was such a masterpiece that it's repeated on the back cover you don't get any kind of a summary you get the front cover with a barcode but that's not as bad as the other ones this cover is the best of the three that's right this book has been revised there are new editions out and I've got the one that I think came out in 2016 the one just before this was a little more harmless but Theresa still looks like a mess Teresa still looks a little lopsided and lumpy her hats ask you kind of a mass the the background is looks like it was drawn in with pencils and that's got nothing on the first cover the first cover looks like something that I would have done for a school project when I was six emperors Teresa stands in the front of the cover with holding the world in her hands get it symbolism with a couple of images some of which I don't know what they're supposed to be I've even got the White House you've got Parliament and Big Ben those pop up in the book so those were obvious there's a passenger jet and those get used so bizarrely in the book you'll see what I mean and you got this one that kind of looks like a like a suspension bridge but I'm I think that's supposed to be the mud bridge that shows up later and trust me that's a really weird scene I'm not sure what this last one is it looks like an explosion on a chain I'm probably gonna figure this out going through the book again because a lot happens in this book it just happens very slowly it's got I don't even know how to describe it so yeah as ugly as this is this is the best one now that being said I can't draw for [ __ ] myself norman's first offense is probably gonna be oh yeah well at least I drew my own book cover yeah that one's mine I had that done professionally because I can't draw I can barely do stick figures and even then they all look like they have debilitating scoliosis so I hire artists because they're better at it than I am bonus points I don't pay them an exposure I pay them in money but that being said I can still critique that art you see in this way I follow Steven Hoff Setters viewpoint if I saw one and three I still be like dude [Applause] that's going to be out there now something to keep in mind as we're going through this story is how plot elements are brought up Norman rambling brings up topics and ideas that haven't been established and raises questions that don't matter or make sense because of this there's very little logical consistency to the book Theresa also has a tendency to take problems and solve them by making things much much worse her solutions are some of the most creative and most idiotic ly dangerous things I have ever read the ideas that this woman puts out are astonishing the fact that no one is jumping to stop her is evidence that there's the humanity is done we've had a good run we don't deserve to live anymore but that is enough background for now I am finally going to show you the true horror that is Emperors Teresa so immediately Norman tries to open the book with a couple of quotes and as I've said before that could be a very effective way to to flavor the chapter or the book that you're about to get into the problem is there are three quotes once from the Bible and the other two quotes are from characters from within this book so that's that's what we're dealing with I'm very simple I follow my conscience I am what I do if you think that's easy try it for one day um most people do that and they don't even think about it you can teach millions something more important when the world falls apart around us we look within ourselves and find ourselves show us what's within you that is both vague and uninteresting and tells us nothing about either the character who's talking or the person he's talking to and of course there's the Bible quote what is man secrets that you are mindful of him and a son of man that you care for him yet you have made him little less than a god ah but then there is the ever-important opening line remember this is the hook this is the then that grabs onto the reader and has you wanting more I'm Teresa the younger daughter of Edward and Elizabeth Sullivan and I hope it's not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age 10 so while I'm not interested in this book from the hook it's not a very good opening line it is indicative of what we're going to get the entire book can be summed up as Norman fawns over his original character do not steal now while the opening line is not always going to knock it out of the park God knows I've messed up on that every once in a while you think you could do better then I was a cute kid I was the princess in the Sullivan clan of Framingham Massachusetts because besides being cute I was a whiz in school and had a good disposition all the relatives expected great things from me now many people will use a particular term to define Empress Theresa you know what it is because you're thinking it right now it is absolutely accurate but I'm going to do my best not to utter it during this review as a personal challenge but not only do we get the blandest explanation of what she looks like we get the blandness explanation of who she is rushed out right out the gate I was destined for great things yeah so is Anakin Skywalker the thing is some people actually like Anakin Skywalker the entire first page is like this there are so many things it's the book tries to set up as Teresa is the greatest she is the most meaningful person ever over and over it hammers this point in so many times on the first page Prime Minister Blair said I'd be remembered in a million years did you catch that Churchill Hitler and Lincoln will be footnotes in dusty history books a thousand years from now and nobody remembers Charles Martel who saved Christianity in Europe by winning the Battle of Tours 1300 years ago to set up the world as we know it today but Prime Minister Blair said I'd be remembered for a million years mr. Blair is not inclined to exaggerating there's so much wrong with that at once first off you're introducing another character and we know nothing of him but you're already telling us that he's not inclined to exaggerating your Russian character at that point you're giving us character before the character if that makes sense we're getting these details that don't really impact anything because we don't know who the person she's talking about is the the sentence itself has been reinforced so many times already that's like four examples on a single page also nobody remembers Charles Martel from the Battle of Tours are you talking about Charles the hammer who I was told about when I was a kid and that's the other thing there's there's a lot of God talk in this book and I don't I don't mean to say that disparagingly because you can use religion effectively while there's nothing inherently wrong with using religion and literature normals reliance is so forced and in-your-face that it can only appeal to people who are already deeply entrenched in that religion this isolates various readers since they can't relate or possibly get insulted like what we saw in trigger warning you did not see the worst of the anti-muslim stuff in there good use of religion is either used to enhance certain characters like Patrick Bauer's in Steven James's books or use this subtle allegory like in CS Lewis's books Steven James wrote a series of murder mysteries and the protagonist it's technically his books are listed under Christian fiction so they're they're fiction stories but with a heavy emphasis on Christianity and I actually kind of liked those books to an extent he needs to get rid of the stepdaughter character but that's a lengthy separate grant I would say the BET's religion used effectively because it's used to enhance the protagonist he is a religious man who occasionally questions the world God's plans for things oh god why would you let these horrible murders happen and it works it enhances the character gives them a little more definition there's also CS Lewis who wrote the entire which language in the Wardrobe saga seven books in that and there there's a very heavy religious allegory behind everything Aslan is an allegory for Jesus obviously religion can be used effectively it's not used effectively at all in this really God doesn't even show up or anything despite being talked about so very often and and being named Teresa refers to God as an inspiration and will try to talk directly to him which can work if it's done correctly but the way that it's set up it's like oh god please help me with this thing I'm doing and then she goes and she solves it herself and never goes back to thank God or I even acknowledge that he may have had a hand in in saving the day it feels like filler like Norman's just putting this worship into his book in case he needs a backup excuse when it gets to the pearly gates oh no see I deserve to get into heaven look at how much I praised God in that book I wrote and then st. Peter sends him straight to hell because he also read at first Arisa and another thing Churchill Hitler and Lincoln will be footnotes industrial history books so by this way Teresa is directly comparing herself to Hitler not good optics Churchill and looking fine there were great men who did great things not so much with Hitler you don't really want to associate yourself with a name like that go with George Washington instead or Thomas Edison or dozens of other people that you could think of right now you're still on the first page [ __ ] I swear I don't the reviews not gonna go that long I'm not gonna go into that much detail but these look at how many tabs I have oh my god so I'm sorry this is genuinely difficult to talk about because there's so much wrong if you ever get a chance there are free samples of certain chapters of this book that you can look try to see how much you can go through them and then realize that I went through 465 pages I'm getting stressed out just looking at some of the early pages again because there's so much wrong I had to replace a highlighter it started out with blue I moved to pink because I her an out of ink in my highlighter I was making so many notes but Teresa continues setting herself up as if she's got this great burden that she's expected to carry even though by this point she's like 10 and has no reason to believe that her life is gonna be anything but ordinary she spends so much time talking about how super amazing awesome she is but we never really get any establishment for it the idea is rushed through and nothing is given to support it I was cute I was amazing I was super popular okay tell me why give me some meat to go with the bare bones you're giving me and it takes goddamn forever to get to any point ever everybody has pressures there are two kinds one is threats to your life and health I had more than my share of that with a thousand assassins wanting to get me this is actually a lie while there are claims of assassins there's like one spot where one guy attacks her and it's brushed off by like the next page something you'll notice is that she keeps bringing up the threat of assassins over and over and over there there's so much build-up that when something finally did happen I was like oh my god it says it's something and she just like gets inadvertently hit my car and it doesn't make sense in context but we'll get to it that's like 400 pages down the way the other kind is bearing responsibility for other people's lives in welfare that's really tough you care about them I set new world records in that department think you're really right seek your pure in height when I know I'm a million times as humbleness now aren't people were sure I'd crack under the pressure but I didn't it will take smarter heads than mine to figure out why not I don't even know what that means okay so who's they in this Teresa routinely talks about how other people judge her or think about her and I think that's supposed to be Norman's offhanded attempt at mocking critics of his book but it doesn't work within the set up of the world because not only has nothing been established yet but there's nothing to really judge like who are these people and why would they want to mess with a ten-year-old I had to learn all I could about the world I wondered why should I be worrying about it in the fourth grade I'd soon find out so at this point she's learning about the world to save it from a destiny that she has not been given yet that makes no sense also that is a terrible setup I've seen better foreshadowing on the expiration date on my milk ah but at least Norman knows how books work as we see here I'll be telling my own story which is a good thing because nobody knows it as well as me narrating the story beans but to really drive that point home so that Norman wants you to know how this is going to work so we continues that thought with this but remember you'll learn things in the same sequence I did somebody else telling my story could only say what I did in the world they couldn't get in my head like you will I actually read this whole book the best book ever written I am too sober I am far too sober I'd be giving Norman too much credit by calling his writing style juvenile not only are all of his sentences awkward as hell and his word choice extremely simple but there are barely any commas or variation to his punctuation it is physically draining to go through this book look I'm not the fastest reader but I am NOT a slow reader it took me two months to get through that two months and a week and a half just to get through that book so anyway after two pages of Theresa talking about how great she is we finally get to something of a setting with Theresa at home with her 17 year old sister Katherine a character who was old enough to be her babysitter and will show up only one other time in this book to the point that I honestly forgot that Theresa was not an only child I'm pretty sure Norman did as well oh wait I'm sorry did I say that we were getting into the story because we forgot this little bit oops before going on I have to mention an odd incident that happened six months before I was born oops I couldn't think of a way to more naturally bring this into the story you have one paragraph between this attempted start up a plot and this oops moment why don't you just move something back copy and paste to the other side of that paragraph is Norman writing this on a typewriter does he not have a delete button this mysterious thing that happened was when her mom was raking leaves in the backyard and a fox showed up a metal rake is a good weapon against a creature as small as a fox and mom held her ground after five minutes the Fox walked away this strange event seemed unimportant my parents forgot about it for 18 years okay now I can begin my story Theresa explains that she follows God's Word and that's the only reason she's able to get through all of her problems and this is the first of many many many times in which she will attribute her own accomplishments to God she a problem she says oh god help me she solves the problem using her own abilities and skills and later on magic powers and somehow God's responsible for that and at the risk of being highly offensive this is how one woman on ironically sees God let's grab some kneepads a stiff drink and go about his [ __ ] Norman's try to claim previously that he doesn't really invoke God very often and while it's true he doesn't utilize deus ex machina is terribly often like literal deus ex machina 'he's he does go out of his way to praise god and i'm not saying that in and of itself is a bad thing it does come off as filler though the story sort of starts when Teresa was playing in her backyard and do you remember that Fox that was so unceremoniously dropped a page ago well it came back when Teresa is you know it came back 10 years later when Teresa is 10 she's playing in her backyard and it stops and stares at her and then this happens in an instant faster than you could blink an eye a softball sized white ball emerged from the Fox and went straight into my stomach you say one of the things you do when you critique books is you look for a lot of subtext you eventually learn the many ways that certain messages and images can be presented through subtle use of language and double meaning we just saw a fox approach a 10 year old girl and all of a sudden there is this white stuff that got shot at her stomach now I'm not saying that Marvin intended to rights to the image that you were currently making fun of him for but it is there welcome to the Internet Norman we're all [ __ ] weird here also despite the softball sized white ball moving faster than the blink of an eye Theresa was still able to perceive it so figure that out well the Fox runs off and Teresa just goes back to her day thinking well maybe a weird daydream because I'm hungry until fire engines show up you see what had happened is apparently there was a stay heat spike all of a sudden and they're getting temperatures of a hundred and fifteen degrees in some areas and 70 in others so well it's true that the fire department does do more than just put out fires and rescue cats from trees do they really investigate random heat spikes but I'm not saying it's impossible I'm just curious what that phone call was like yeah like there's like really warm all of a sudden stop calling us but not only did the fire department's showed up two days later a very obvious surveillance car showed up Theresa thinks that maybe they came to investigate her because that fox orb thing happened so in order to deduce what's going on did she talk to her parents or call the police or approach the car in order to talk to the possible surveillance team she did none of those her solution makes no goddamn sense she dials zero on her phone and talks to the operator I am serious she gets the number for Alice Pizza then she hangs up and somehow determines this means the surveillance team was not listening to her I have no words but she's convinced that she is being watched so the next day she calls the operator again and this time there's a delay so they are watching her what is logical consistency that's not how it works I don't get how that's that's how its introduced in the book there's no setup there's no explanation of oh well it's an old secret from the Cold War that it turns out if your phones are ever tapped just call the operator to verify it's nothing it's like this is supposed to be common knowledge call the operator and if you get a response if they do their job you're not being watched but if they don't do your their job they are watching you I don't get it the ruddy style in this book is astounding because while it rushes to get through the story as quickly as possible it also includes several unnecessary details like this line here that I'm about to read two days later my mom took me to his nearby strip mall there was a DVD movie rental store I looked around for the classic movie 2001 a Space Odyssey they'd shown it on television two months earlier that last line adds nothing I mean what does that do to flavor the universe or build character or advance the plot nothing you have to trim the fat if a sentence does not serve the story in any way get rid of it what does this add how does this help shape the world by reaffirming that reruns are a thing no one in this book is so goddamn long it is very important that you understand that television reruns are a thing [Music] but the key about that is the mention of the computer how how from 2001 is this creepy robotic machine that that really freaks Teresa out when she was a kid but well that freaks her out the people watching her and this do not freak her out she's out shopping with her mom at the grocery store and a woman approaches her asks do you have a cell phone yeah call me when you're alone she handed me a piece of paper with a phone number a stranger danger not a thing now you do not just go and randomly talk to children and hand them your phone number call the police the woman turns out to be Jan Struthers from the United States government Kent Mansley worked for the government she's been tracking Teresa for the whole summer and she's been the one in charge of all of the Watchers following her around and she establishes something which I had actually forgotten about this but this conflicts with something later on in the book they've been tracking this weird anomaly something from outer space came to earth seven years ago seven years keep that in mind now this this already conflicts with stuff from the book because the Fox thing as we learn later on had been the host for that white orb thing that's what's really at the center of all this but we've already established that the fox thing visited Teresa's mother ten years ago so what fell seven years ago this is never answered now well they had been following Teresa for a little while apparently one big mark of suspicion came when Teresa rented 2001 a Space Odyssey apparently Teresa was giving off the heat that they detected earlier on it's not explained or even utilized later on at all outside of this one chapter if you forget about it it won't affect the story at all Norma just needed a way for the government to get invested in Theresa so they could make contact so we came up with a stupid way of Oh Theresa just lets out a lot of heat they never use it when you're writing your story like that when you're setting up the universe everything has to remain consistent and you have to properly follow through with it if you don't and you set up things like that where you've just got this random heat spike it looks like you don't understand your own ideas your own rules if the author doesn't understand the rules how can the reader be expected to if you set up these things artificially just to advance a singular plot point and it doesn't show up or evolve in any way within the story it's not gonna work the the structure of the novel is going to collapse and that's what happens multiple times if this book were meant to be a skyscraper you wouldn't have a tower reaching into the heavens you'd have a messy distorted pile of rebar and unmixed cement the other thing that I really don't like about this book is just the way that the dialogue goes on you get pages upon pages of prose and you want to break that up every one small pages and pages of prose are inevitable they're going to happen fine but when you can if you can break them up with dialogue you add more variety to the the pages you add more variety to your sentence structure it just looks better it's on a very basic level it is more visually appealing Moorman decides to do large chunks of prose or large chunks of dialogue and the dialogue it goes back and forth there's no like there's no action between so much of this there is nothing to break up the dialogue once it gets going to the point where it kind of gets confusing who's talking like you've got it you've got to pay attention because you can't tell who the characters are based on what they're saying a well-written novel the characters will be so distinct that you can throw dialogue up there and you'll already know who's talking because they have a unique style of speaking or they've got an accent or they've got a lisp or they use certain words or something like that don't get that in here it also really doesn't help that all the dialogue here is information that the reader already knows about how long after the white ball jumped that you did the firetrucks come half an hour did the white thing change you in any way no does it make sounds or talk to you no have you seen it again no it's like it went away how much have you been eating lately like I always do oh my god I am so good not that Norman would be able to tell he actually in his book says that this is amazing this was the most important interview since Moses came down the mountain this Q&A has nothing but a rapid back-and-forth exchange of shallow answers and close ended questions Joaquin Phoenix's interview with David Letterman was more important than this one and Joaquin I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight but apparently watching 2001 a Space Odyssey was a vital indicator that Teresa was aware of this thing all right she dropped that line immediately you rented 2001 a Space Odyssey what did it show you it showed me don't talk to this thing it's like talking to the devil I haven't seen a Space Odyssey in a while but I have no idea how you can reasonably draw that conclusion because while she does end up calling the device go ball thing inside of her how there's no real link between her Hal and computer how son-of-a-bitch the government's listening so Jay and Struthers explains that Teresa is going to be getting a security detail of sorts mostly they're gonna be watching and observing her and noting anything out of the ordinary but they set it up in the worst way by this point Teresa officially names the white orb inside of her how and she asked what would happen if one of the people watching her talks like what if they reveal this super top secret information about how or how living inside of Teresa or anything like that and Jan says this to calm her down most of our people don't know why they're watching you only the people at the top know I'm one of the few people who knows you give off heat without knowing that nobody can prove you have anything to do with how Jesus use a comma so the people who are following Teresa the people who have to monitor and report anything unusual don't know what they're looking for they don't even know why they're following Teresa they're just they suddenly got orders follow this ten-year-old girl and apparently nobody questioned it how are they react if something goes wrong what would they know to look for what behaviors would be considered aberrant or not there's no environmental baseline for them to start from so yours paying a bunch of guys in suits to stare at a little girl from afar the subtext here is mortifying and what's worse is how easy this is to write away just say that the watchers are all sworn to secrecy that or don't bring up the question at all cuz it's a dumb question if they don't know what to report on or anything about Theresa then how can they note something unusual this is incredibly destructive to the investigation I don't know how anyone can receive these orders and not demand an explanation you see that's what I'm talking about when I say that there are mistakes in this book that are compounded there they're wrong in in like layered ways because this was an attempt to fix the whole what if what if one of them talks problem even though that's not really a problem in the first place it's just an arbitrary factoid that Norman thought up while he was writing this even though it really doesn't matter if you didn't even address that question it would not be a problem people readers would just assume that they were all they all took oaths or signed NDA's or something and this is a great display of the separation between the narrator and the reader there's there's no reliable connection here for the reader to really relate to or grasp or anything there's such a severe disconnect because the narrator Teresa is asking questions that the reader probably wouldn't think of she asks what would happen if she wanted to tell other people outside of Jan this the secret about how and Jan says but remember if you can't keep it a secret why would your parents your mother will want to share it with your aunt Jessica and on Jessica will want to share it with Uncle John and after that you get thousands of reporters showing up to bother you even though there's no proof of any of this and it sounds crazy all the more so it's anticipating something that hasn't happened yet that interests people but there has to be some sort of a baseline of truth for you to really understand this first you can't just say this little girl has a magical alien snowball living inside her and expect people to buy that especially if it doesn't manifest itself in any real way outside of making the area around her a little warm again something that does not exist outside of this one chapter it also doesn't help that Jan works for the Defense Intelligence Agency a real agency if you're not familiar with them for some reason and I don't know why they would set it up like this but for some reason the DIA hired all the watchers from outside of their agency to watch Theresa they know nothing you know nothing Jon Snow now the DIA is not the largest or most prominent agency in the federal government in the United States but why would they give something of this matter of importance this apparent display of possible extraterrestrial life why would they hand that job of monitoring thought the the alien out to contractors it seems like an unnecessary risk but Theresa really displays her intellect at the end of the scene when Jan says goodbye and just says hey call us if you ever need anything in a woman I realized Jan Struthers hadn't asked me if I told anyone besides my parents the secret they knew I hadn't how did they know that Wow it's almost like they've been spying on you for months you know one of them one of the scary things that I heard about this before I went into it was a review that said something akin to what happens when you take a four hundred plus page first draft manuscript and presented it as a completed result you get Empress Theresa I personally disagree with that assessment this feels like multiple first drafts from multiple different books that got smashed together and have nothing to really do with each other and that was submitted as a complete manuscript so the next scene it just says one day she wakes up and she notices an orange spot in the middle of her field of view I'm going to cut it short it's an aimbot Teresa gets magical aiming powers yeah it's as lame as it sounds it's basically a little targeting reticle that just kind of sits there I guess it's there for the rest of her life and and the way that she explains the way how it works later on it doesn't make any sense how this would develop oh I've got a whole thing on that later on just keep this in mind she gets an aimbot oh you think that really sucks is she doesn't even do anything with it you spends all this time like half a page setting it up and exploring it and it never gets used in any meaningful way for the rest of the book I brought up the 3-inch wide flat rock and threw it at a gallon water sprinkler can ten feet away the rock hit the can dead center I hadn't even tried to do that I found another rock and threw it at the can it to hit the can little girl throws rocket can news at 11 and this is one of the many problems with Theresa as a protagonist she has no imagination and get used to me saying that because I will say it multiple times so that's where the orange dot was for it was an aiming device it got the rocks to whatever I was looking at interesting but I couldn't see any use for it you know I bet she'd have an amazing Bank shot with a grenade she actually does eventually find a use for it when she goes to play catch with one of the neighbor kids and that's pretty much the extent that she uses that for ever she uses it to help her with pitching noodle noodle noodle and because of that she becomes the star pitcher in high school but that's not the only power that she gets she also gets super-strength and that one she does use in very limited capacity but again okay to it later the way she discovers it though there was a new bottle of steak sauce I tried to open it but it was tight the trouble with these steak bottles was that the cap was so narrow there was no leverage to twist it I tried harder no wonder little old ladies starved to death old ladies starve to death because they cannot open their bottle of a1 steak sauce what's weird though is that her powers seem to come from how receiving Kelly can nudge like hey can he help me out with this she was struggling to open up the bottle and how apparently noticed that and gave her super strength to help her open the bottle and so it shatters well in order to test this she grabs some horseshoes and tries twisting them which which works at first it didn't change but as I applied more force Hal seem to get the idea the horseshoe bent easily is like gaining superpowers viola Markey and evolution well these powers are strange so she needs someone to talk to rather than go to her parents though she being a good Christian girl goes to talk to the priest at her local church but she can't just go to the priest and say bless me Father for I have sinned she actually had to provide proof so she ran and grabbed a bag to store the horseshoes in to take to the church but not just any bag all the way through the living room I picked up a burlap shopping bag used by environmentally conscious people who didn't want paper or plastic you hear that everyone Therese is better than you yeah so apparently priests are supposed to be beyond salvation if they reveal any kind of a secret so she's telling the priest father doughnut doughnut he fathered Oh Nettie and she proves that she has super strength by taking out the horseshoes and bending them in front of him and father donut he becomes her only confidante now father donut he is very impressed by this display but rather than think demonic possession or anything like that he just accepts that there was some weird alien goo monster inside of Theresa now cuz that's a much more reasonable assumption and this gets confirmed when Jan Struthers who was apparently in the parking lot comes up to talk to father donut II now when you're writing dialogue something to keep in mind is repeating information if you repeat something that the reader already knows you're wasting their time Norman does this religiously in multiple ways actually it's on kind of impressive how bad it is one thing that happens on numerous occasions is Teresa will think to herself hey this is really dumb and then she'll voice that through dialogue and say hey everyone this is really dumb like you've just established that why are you saying it again and there's also the matter of bringing up points that have already been established through previous scenes when you're doing that the better thing to do is to let's say you had a couple of characters one had this adventure through the woods that the reader got to live through Bob well call him well Bob wants to go and tell all of his friends so rather than Bob give me two pages of dialogue repeating everything that we've already read he could just say Bob told his friends about his adventures in the woods that's the kind of thing that you want to do because at that point you are pointing out that Bob communicated what happened to him to a certain group of friends but you're not repeating everything to the point where we lose interest everything has already been established and we don't need it repeated but Norman never learned that these men don't know everything only I do what did Teresa say I'm not at liberty to say it's not the usual stuff it isn't it's critical to you tell no one Teresa will be the first to suffer people will come after her they'll kidnap her kill her or worse who are you I work for the of American government how many of you are there hundreds that's a lot of people do you begin to understand how important this is I'm beginning to [Applause] oh I forgot to mention because bye-bye this one it's been seven years since the orb bonded with Teresa and she's 17 now so because father donut he believes Teresa and this whole how think it's confirmed with his meeting with Jan he arranges a meeting with the Cardinal he doesn't get a name he's just the Cardinal and he doesn't really exist outside of this one paragraph a meeting was arranged with the Cardinal it was concluded that there was no diabolical possession I was a perfectly normal good girl my story confirmed by the brief visit of Jan Struthers to be true no matter how amazing it was I find it amazing that we got all of that dialogue repeating information that we had already had established that we did not need and the Cardinal who will be important as a plot element later on when Teresa goes to college not only does not get a name but doesn't really get any stage presence the information that Norman chooses to dish out his choices are so bizarre he he over feeds us redundant information and deprives us of vital information so I can barely follow along with what's going on while I read the same scene over and over and over it is maddening I've forgot to mention this earlier she gets to skip a year in school and the reason why is confusing I did so well in the fifth grade that it was decided I'd skip the sixth and go straight into the seventh I would graduate from high school at 17 part of the decision to let me skip a year was my hair it started growing very thick after how came around I mean you could grab a handful of my hair and feel the weight like it was wet mom was sure this was a sign of my change of life and I needed to be with girls my own emotional age so many times this book leaves me speechless at how dumb his hair is a lousy indicator of emotional age take it from someone with hair like this because she had a good barber she got to skip a grade that is a very weird flex I don't even know why I would have that kind of an effect on her I mean did the Fox that howl came out of have particularly luscious fur apparently Jan Struthers also bumps into Teresa every now and then to check up on her and Teresa at one point asks how many people are watching her 400 she said it takes that many people to watch someone 24 hours a day without being noticed I guarantee if you had 400 people watching a single person oh my god they would notice I'm into the Jason Bourne movies they had like maybe a dozen or two dozen people watching him and he had a confirmed kill count and any that is the end of chapter 1 yes everything that I just went over takes place in the first 25 pages of this book do you understand why the pacing is a nightmare all of that information got shoved in here with no time to develop or grow or sprout up naturally it is such a rushed mess so much information no time to flesh out whole book is like this every chapter is like that some chapters do focus more on individual plot lines but because of the structure of the overall novel nothing stays in place for long so the next chapters starts up all about how Teresa is an amazing baseball player apparently she was able to get on the high school boys baseball team in her freshman year no doubt her strength combined with her aimbot vision made that for a rather easy task and I guess that that was enough to get her on TV because all of a sudden she's on TV I was on television all the time now I learned something about the world people said bad things about me on the Internet to to use an appropriate baseball term wow that came out of left field it's a complete jump in subject she's talking about how awesome she is at baseball then all of a sudden hey internet trolls are a thing apparently this is a section that was revised in later editions as part of Norman's response to the trolling he got for his terrible terrible book because it is brought up so unnaturally and there's no real explanation given it's just they're saying mean things about her because it's it's so out of nowhere that it can only serve as Norman complaining about trolls it doesn't serve the story it is the author's personal vendetta against criticism it's weighing the story down because you know the first three pages pretty much just get summed up with this complaint trolls why are they going after her are these just [ __ ] at her school the way this is written and the fact that Teresa has been on TV makes this seem like some widespread attack what is Teresa done to warrant any kind of attention like this especially because this contradicts what she was saying earlier about the baseball because she says so being a pitcher on a boys baseball team wouldn't be such a big deal you'd think and it wasn't I made the boys team in my freshman year and then that jumps into the paragraph about her being on TV all the time so is it a big deal or not why is she on TV at all no explanation is actually given for that I am assuming it's because of the baseball it's the only thing that really fits within the context of the story but it's not confirmed so that's pure speculation on my part Norman tries to fit the complaints the trolling in with the context of the story of what Teresa would have to put up with possibly and and Norman doesn't really know what he's talking about even worse were the websites that a few people started about me they questioned my sexual orientation or said I must have gone to bed with a coach to get on the team they said I was making out with everybody on the team there was nothing I could do about these people so Teresa being on the baseball team is not a big deal but it still warns people creating multiple websites just to mock her I don't get it [Music] so Teresa goes to the principal to try to complain and the principal goes beyond trying to console Teresa the only way I can really sum this up is the principal starts sucking Teresa's dick you are beautiful intelligent and you're often on television you're a sports star you have straight A's and high morals all these things represent what people want in kids you're the daughter every parent wants you're the student every teacher wants the young person society wants you fill all the authorities expectations look there's trying to restore self-esteem and there's raising the kid on a pestle so ridiculously high you'd think that she was like the second coming oh my god I okay I love this part this is gonna be a bit lengthy but I love how stupid this is so the principal tries to comfort Teresa by explain why by relating an old commercial she saw a while back there was a TV commercial years ago I never forgot a young woman has three horses and bought a fourth a miniature horse only two feet high she put the little horse in the corral with the three normal-sized horses they sniffed the little horse and ran away from him the little horse had very short legs and couldn't run he walked towards the big horses who kept running away he followed them everywhere but couldn't get within 50 feet of them finally the little horse gave up and stared at the big horses and towards the house where the young woman washed out of her window it was very sad the little horse didn't understand why he was being rejected then the woman ordered something online that was what the commercial was about she heard a dog door for the front of her house now the little horse could come into the house and be with a woman anytime you wanted selling dog doors for miniature horses look again what you're going for but a Budweiser commercial this is not it's supposed to be this this intimate moment of looking after the poor little horse and sure that's sad but dog door for horses [Music] you seriously couldn't think of anything better than that oh my god so the moral of the story is the little horse ended up better than the other horses and Theresa takes this as such a revelation that it completely changes her worldview I saw why the trolls were angry they knew they couldn't go where I was going I'd have a good life they wouldn't what they said made no sense they were really mixed up big-time I blame the parents for not raising them right now this is me just being incredibly petty but I'm assuming Norman's gonna want to use that same argument against me because you know why he thinks I'm trolling uh and and I'm not going ever in life so let me just right there here we go going nowhere in life so that entire subject got resolved so now Teresa is just talking about her mom an unexamined life is not worth living know thyself mom said too many people never question who they are and how they're doing this is a fast-track to disaster this book in a nutshell nothing else happened to be in high school besides the social media bozos hatred making this entire chapter a complete waste so the book just brings up and drops plots between paragraphs like I'm skipping a couple of things here eventually Teresa sits down and a Burger King to meet with Jan Struthers Burger King where the noise gave privacy as good as the Sahara Desert to update each other's thoughts and info about how people with security clearances actually have to be really careful about what they discuss and where you can't really talk about sensitive subjects out in the open I I know that you see that happen all the time in movies it's like clandestine spy work but it's not how it actually works in real life norm is just picking up all these plot points from movie cliches so apparently they just go back and they reinforce where how came from apparently he was a hundred foot wide white ball that headed to Framingham Massachusetts and nobody saw it now this is contradicted later on but that's much later in the book just again remember that and the seven years thing so in response to this mysterious white ball the president president Sheffield organized a secret office in the Pentagon the Office of orbital phenomena surveillance or oops for shorts which will be great when someone has to explain where all the money in their budget went hey who spent fifty million dollars on coffee filters oops Therese is a little perturbed by all this though because she hasn't heard anything from Hal I mean aside from the super strength and the aim body so she hasn't been in any kind of communication and she wonders what reason he may have come to earth for it was a safe bet he didn't travel a million light-years just to watch me take showers um you why did you include that that's weird we also get an addition it's not just that the area heats up around Teresa even though I don't think that's happening anymore because no one else really complains about it it's like why why do we hang out with this Teresa chick it's like the temperature goes up 40 degrees whatever she's near human space heater or something but no apparently they notice a column of disturbed air a directly above Teresa that reaches that to space that they detect via Doppler radar now it's not picked up normally by weather stations because Doppler radars they scan horizontally but they can see it with a radar beam aimed straight down so I guess they're using the Doppler radar vertically so they go back and forth a little bit more about how where he came from what he might want what this might mean for Teresa and Teresa's worried about it so Jan tells her not to worry about it you may have to act quickly you might need the knowledge of Thomas Jefferson and the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln ready for herpes and in the next section Jan is missing Teresa attempts to reach out to Jan using the email that was provided the email is Jan's Watchers at snoop dot-gov say this is why it took me so long to get through this book I had to take frequent breaks I have to take frequent breaks in between this review already stopped the camera like five times Jan's missing Jan's confirmed missing and Teresa's only point of contact is some guy named Jerry Jeremy Benton a character who is so insignificant I forgot that he was a character until about five seconds ago the problem is this has a bit of suspicion in the United States federal government going as far as the White House worrying about what Teresa and how really are so Jamm went to the Canadian Prime Minister now considering the sensitive nature of everything that's going on with Teresa and Hal and considering the clearances and information that Jan had exclusive access to this is possibly treason the book uses this is a branch out to Prime Minister Blair of Britain I don't know why they just didn't just go directly to him why they had to go through Canada first but Khanna's closer I guess but anyway Jan the government point of contact that Teresa had been relying on for the past 20 pages or so is pretty much out of the story she does come back later but it doesn't matter so you might as well forget who she is now the big problem is that the newly sworn-in president William Martin doesn't like Teresa or how and is really worried that they may be some sort of a security risk something about aliens possibly invading or something this is this is where the book really breaks things down into details we don't need to know about to the point where I genuinely don't care and it just keeps talking it's like the chatty friend at a party who doesn't notice you're nodding off while they're talking so the whole chapter ends Theresa wondering about how and why the president might not trust her or like her if Hal wanted me to do something good I was ready if something bad I wouldn't do it yeah except we haven't really seen anything from house so we don't know if he's able to mind-control her or manipulate her or bait her into certain circumstances or get her to perceive things differently or get her to hallucinate so she attacks somebody innocent we know very little about what how is by this point so this statement from Teresa comes up as extremely superficial how much control does she actually have we don't know for a solid fact the fact that hell doesn't seem to have any kind of a personality and what a statement which is confirmed later on doesn't really assist us so she looks extremely naive when she's talking about oh well I'll just do good and not bad and keep in mind of course we've seen pretty much nothing of Teresa's moral compass she's obviously willing to use these powers for personal gain notice she's on the the baseball team which got her on TV so if she wants us to believe that she won't use these powers ever for personal gain I don't buy it anyway next chapter so Teresa gets a full scholarship into Boston College which is a real let's see a private Jesuit research university I looked that up apparently father donate a and the Cardinal were involved in getting her in for the full scholarship while she's in college keep in mind she's 17 at this point she meets a couple of people while she's in the cafeteria she meets a guy who's looking at her intensely she called him mr. intense and there was another guy who came up to say hi his name is mr. fast move there's something to be said about naming characters based on certain arbitrary factoids about themselves you can do that absolutely joe abercrombie does this a lot in his books random side characters who get ooh I gotta read this book you can you can name a side character something like big nose or small feet or whatever but it helps if you have a scant amount of creativity to go along with it especially because he goes and immediately just gives his name some guy named Jack yeah Jack Koster oh but let's not forget mr. intense he is a guy named steve hartley and if you're familiar with this book you know where that's going but just like deciding to go out with mister fast move Theresa still gives a paragraph long description of who mr. intense is as well as an adjoining chapter explaining who jack is the problem is that mr. intense Steve kind of comes off as really quiet and unassuming maybe a little creepy because apparently he was staring pretty intently from across the cafeteria oh my god the setup in this book is exhausting but enough about establishing side characters the plot demands that we find out about these two random guys following Theresa it turns out that they're watchers but the campus police pick them up and take them in and the Watchers refuse to answer any questions until Theresa gets there things happen so quickly and with no buildup so it is actually exhausting to read people talk about how smoothly a book spacing might come across you're gonna fast pacing you're gonna upslope hazing it can work what really matters is how consistent and how smooth the pacing comes across this book jumps around different plot points and characters so quickly so sporadically that I am I am mentally exhausted just doing a recap like I'm being honest I'm actually getting really tired because this takes so much it takes so much to relive this [ __ ] book I'm not even fifty pages in the watchers get captured by campus security Theresa follows them in my note here is what the officers asks can you come to our office I don't know where that is I'll follow you Teresa sounds like a very polite robot so apparently these two guys have been seen on campus frequently following Teresa as she knew about them she knew the Watchers were following her around but there was a team of 400 people in this and they kept sending the same guys around to follow Teresa these guys were not prepared with any kind of a cover story they didn't have anything to answer with when campus security pulled them into an office they don't have any badges to show because they're just contractors it's laughable how little planning there is here they should be rotating in ships with someone just sitting there nonchalantly reading a newspaper on every corner this is why editing is so important you've got to go back and make sure that your story points make sense there's a team of 400 people and there's no plan to get anyone out of trouble if something like this happens and Teresa goes overboard with worrying about this it's gone too far they'll go to the FBI and the newspaper call your boss these guys are not real police they do not have arresting authority I doubt that they have FBI contacts I doubt they'd go to the newspaper because that looks bad the most they have on these two washers is a stocking charge so going to the newspaper would be telling everybody don't come to Boston College we allow stalkers here there's that optics maybe go to the police but the most they have on these two is stalking so ends according to every young a little book that I've read that's romantic so they just get a slap on the wrist and get told not to do it again but that whole thing gets resolved because the watchers call their director and the director calls the President of the United States the President of the United States himself directly talks to the the campus security and says leave these guys alone the senior officer in fact says this we will say nothing about this to anybody not to each other not to our wives not to our dogs this situation does not exist nor will it ever exist that's all you see the real problem with that now is that these guys don't have security clearances so they don't have they haven't actually signed NDA's they're not obligated to keep this secret by giving them such an order you are guaranteeing that someone is gonna go to their wife and say hey honey guess what these characters cannot exist in any kind of a real setting because they would absolutely blab to everyone who would listen because the President of the United States something is going on they don't know what it is but they've got agents from the federal government following a student on their campus and the situation is so severe the President of the United States called them directly to say leave this alone [ __ ] is going down they don't know what that's weird that's interesting that's a little scary for some they're gonna blab these characters don't act like people that's that's one of my biggest problems about this they don't act in any way that I can accept as realistic so it's impossible to get into the story to get absorbed in a story because nothing works God God the next scene is October homecoming week and Teresa of course is leaning on Jack to ask her out but apparently Jack's current girlfriend from back home came to visit so yeah Jack's a two-timing jackass and rather than confront Jack directly and demand some kind of an explanation from him Teresa decides to go back to her dorm and sulk for a little bit in fact she actually puts on a little black nothing flimsy dress as described as a backless dress made of flimsy clinging material which apparently was cut six inches above the knee so you know real sexy outfit and she just waits for Jack to come by and explain himself which doesn't happen instead Teresa sits around and watches the Caine Mutiny a movie she had seen before captain queeg was a paranoid personality who couldn't take adversity the author in a nutshell she then jumps between other stories and movies and books which do not matter they do not come back in any way this is big explanation for what's going on with the kay mutiny apparently was adapted from something so Norman is now stepping on my territory and she just contemplates how sad she is because everyone's often the these parties and she's not she's just sulking in her dorm people who never went to college believe it was one continuous party in fact parties were rare so I actually just did a cursory search on Boston colleges student class sighs they just accepted according to this article on reading they just accepted 8400 students out of 31,000 applicants now I went to a small private university Boston College is a much bigger campus we still had parties every single week Boston College just sounds incredibly boring we get a two-page summary of the Caine Mutiny which does not come back at all honestly don't know why it's in here Teresa just sits around her room nothing happens until Steve shows up college life was mostly studying and killing time with inane activities it was a test if you could stand this flight for four years you could stand anything a lot of kids went nuts and dropped out ah yes the freshman with one months experience in college has figured everything out sad story if you think that college is as hard as the kids I've got really bad news for you so because jack is being a jerk Steve makes a move and he and Theresa become an item and the end of watching this show on the BBC called Victoria it's about Queen Victoria and all the adversities that she put up with I don't know I haven't seen it myself so I don't know how well it's being represented here it almost sounds like inspiration for the book except the show apparently came out in 2016 which is after this book was initially published but yes Theresa falls in love with Steve Steve's her first love he also felt he had found the right mate and didn't want to mess things up you just want to mate so we get a little bit more about Steve the only thing that really matters is that he wants to be a physicist that's the only thing that really has any play later on in the story yeah aside from how perfectly matched he is with Teresa see she's incredibly boring and he's incredibly boring they're perfect for each other nearly page long discussion about how their situation was like the situation between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson I don't know why this is here we get we get some background on Hamilton and Jefferson which doesn't do anything it's used to try to compare between Teresa and Steve had different childhoods it's just another chunk of meaningless tangents that Norman just throws in there because I think he's trying to show off but Steve was such a complex romantic gentleman I think this one can you be filed under men writing women oh but Therese is not like those girls you see she just wants the nice married life white picket fence couple of kids a couple of dogs or cats or something and Steve is just the man to give it to her he wanted a lifetime commitment as I did despite almost universal skepticism there really are gentlemen like Steve in the world and every girl wants to be a lady who catches one so I guess lesbians aren't real but what really alarms me about this little love connection is it's not how bland it is or how predictable it is or cliche it's how fast it's moving cuz they're both still freshmen in a month we knew we'd get married and we wanted it soon well really now I don't know how to read that could we go for years without doing it noodle noodle noodle the fact that you have to awkward nervous college students freshmen who decided after a month I suppose it's what this is supposed to be but after a month they wanted to get married to the first person they ever fell in love with and you know what you flip the page they're getting married I expect them to get divorced in about a month now that would be too realistic the wedding though is so bizarre because it's it's the moment that Teresa wanted it's the dream of every girl to marry a perfect gentleman like Steve and the wedding is gonna be this big momentous occasions this tremendous event in her life and I am not exaggerating when I say that Norman spends more time describing her dress then he does the wedding depending upon how you want to look at it is kind of mortifying Norman tries to set this up is it Teresa's being this you know good Catholic girl who never does anything wrong and he talks about her body a lot I don't mean to make it sound like he's he's fantasizing or anything gotta keep this family friendly for YouTube but I've also got a swear so I don't lose any money to kava I don't mean to make it sound like Norman's jerking it between chapters but it's really weird when you get sentences like this I was gorgeous as a recently turned 18 year old oh boy she's barely legal and her dress is described as for the church service I wore a two-piece wedding gown a floor-length wide skirt with spaghetti shoulder straps was made from Matt Duchess satin over this I had a jacket made of peekaboo cotton Venise sorry lace that more or less covered my shoulders and the top half of my upper arms so as not to scandalize the congregation at the reception the jacket and train came off and my shoulders and cleavage charmed the crowd her cleavage charmed the crowd Norman dude come on man that's this a little she's barely 18 anyway so we get that whole description and the wedding kind of happened in between sentences there cuz we've got this ending here where she says at the reception he was so busy describing the dress that we got nothing for the actual wedding itself they move into a small apartment for privacy and they get a new Chevy as a wedding present based on a recent nationwide survey Chevy is more reliable than Toyota Honda and for you guys didn't survey any mechanics huh I was driving the car alone one Saturday to go grocery shopping thinking of the wonderful future waiting for me and that's the end of that chapter with that marvelous cliffhanger chapter for this this one okay this is the big one it's been boring up to this point it's been slow monotonous there have been no character moments this is where [ __ ] really gets ridiculous this is the one with the soda some of you just got really happy about that so Theresa starts off the chapter by immediately getting kidnapped six men with handguns drawn got out of these cars and surrounded me and Theresa despite being a good Catholic girl with very little actual world experience immediately just starts popping an attitude of these guys isn't this overdoing it I asked you got six dudes with guns on you and you're just popping an attitude I was like Bravo that is awesome it's not realistic and it does not fit the character it is funny though so they grabbed her and they put her in their car where they okay and this this gets really stupid really fast so you're gonna have to follow along they grab her and they throw her into a helicopter and on the helicopter she asks where are you taking me to an aircraft carrier answered one of the men holding guns on me am i coming back no so they're taking her off to kill her and and the book does explain what's going on it explains it very badly but Theresa handles this despite again being a good Catholic girl with no world experience handles this very realistically but I didn't cry I wasn't a phony movie actress using hysterics to milk all the drama she could out of every moment I was a real person and didn't give a damn what these kidnappers thought just kidding my new catchphrase is I don't give a [ __ ] [Music] she didn't give a damn then why is she putting up a brave front like you're about to be killed they're frankly ridiculous way but the question then comes up how are they gonna kill Theresa and it's you're not gonna put a bullet in her head you're not gonna throw her out of the helicopter it's so much dumber than that how are you going to do it you'll be put on a plane with an atom bomb this is so special what did they tell you about me you're a danger to the security of the United States how they didn't say no need to know contrary to popular belief the more information you give your agents your soldiers your troops or whatever the better it is that way in the event of something going wrong they already know what's at stake what the risks are how to handle things have a counter particular changes in the operation it's it's better to just tell them this whole need-to-know basis is so overused and so misunderstood in basic Hollywood cliches that it throws a complete misunderstanding of the way these operations work it's ridiculous if your men don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it they're not going to be as invested in the operation as they should be when it comes down to or should we guard this checkpoint oh who cares I don't know we're just getting paid to as opposed to why should we guard this checkpoint well because if we don't so we could take a bomb in and kill all of our friends but these men apparently just blindly follow orders and don't even question we're gonna have you take this girl and put her in a plane and we're going to kill her with an atom bomb and they don't even question it is she some sort of a security risk what kind of a risk is so severe that you have to kill an individual with an atom bomb how is it's not at least raising eyebrows if I received orders like that I would at least ask dude what the [ __ ] especially because she actually does have super-strength she has powers she could probably take these guys out like just push their hearts out of their chests or something instead no Theresa decides to be a good girl and just sits there patiently waiting to be killed look consider SCP or control from remedy studios which a game you should totally be playing by the way in SCP you've got all these weird objects with all these weird powers and abilities and if you mishandle them you could die very terribly so the more information you give those troops the better they can protect themselves and contain the threat that's not happening in this book it also really doesn't fit because the the soldiers or agents or whoever they are we actually never find out what agency they work for they're just government agents they're extremely nonchalant about caring Teresa off to her death like there they are disobeying all basic security procedures they don't even had handcuffs on her yeah it wouldn't do anything because she's got super strength and could snap out of them but they don't know that well they might know that I'm honestly not sure again informations very scant Teresa even looks back at her life and remarks that well she doesn't admit how remarkably boring it is but that's how I read it in retrospect I had had a charmed life nothing had happened to me no attacks by sex-crazed boys no illnesses no traffic accidents no run-ins with the police nothing if I were to write my autobiography now I'd write three lines I was born I had a good time I was vaporized by a bomb so you're admitting that you're boring they they take two or three helicopters they're just hopping around refueling every once in a while and she's basically allowed to wander around like she's a tourist I was allowed to use the restroom with a warning that armed guards had the building surrounded and I couldn't escape it makes no sense oh we also get this little line here apparently she doesn't like dogs because when she was younger a dog barked at her you didn't jump on her you didn't bite her it didn't knock her down just barked at her do you see it as Norman do you see what you're awful book has done your stupid writing makes puppies sad oh and once she saw a traffic accident Oh what's the tow I was at the orphanage so I was 18 then I got my job at the souvenir stand clone once I saw a blimp I knew that this was coming when I first read this book and I'm still confused by it they make three helicopter flights and they eventually land in random set of nondescript military buildings that's how it's described here they're just settling in for the night because they're gonna take a different plane to get to the aircraft carrier the next day so hey lay down and sleep it off for a little bit no I'm gonna have to hold off all explaining this until the end but it is so much dumber than you think there was a beverage dispensing cabinet at the end hopefully it had plastic bottles I walked along and picked up two tuna sandwiches a piece of chocolate cake an 8 ounce carton of milk and a cup of coffee finally arrived at the beverage dispenser it was the size of a refrigerator and had a glass door you could open and grab a drink from a shelf there were 20 ounce bottles of coke in there I grabbed 12 bottles and put them on my tray how did you fit 12 bottles with everything else on a standard sized cafeteria tray that is so weird-looking the stupid actually hurts I pulled up the plastic bag and returned to my tray to put 11 of the 12 coke bottles in the bag there is no reason she does not explain a deep desire to just be readily supplied with coca-cola she just grabs 12 bottles of coke for no discernible reason and she puts them in a bag for no discernible reason and she carries it with her for no discernible reason now the reason why she does this is because this turns out to be some sort of an escape plan that she kind of inadvertently stumbles into Norman wrote himself into a corner and didn't know how to write himself out so he set up the most bizarre escape plan it's not even that effective honestly it's not even a matter of narrative convenience or good timing this is somehow a step down from a deus ex machina [Music] [Applause] [Music] I I would prefer a sudden last-minute realization to to save her honestly cuz it would come off as so less stupid this is such blatant setup and there's no logical reason for any of it she just sits around eating her food holding onto a garbage bag of coke I am NOT rephrasing that her thoughts just go to Steve I smiled as I recalled how awkward he looked when he walked into my dormitory room for the first time that was literally 14 pages ago she's even put in this large cafeteria with like minimal guard you know they're going to try to kill you and she does nothing to try to escape this is not a a cunning dynamic protagonist this is a limp flower who is being guided through the plot by the hand this is not some intense woman of action ready to stand up for what's right just going too long and hoping she doesn't die and when she's threatened with death nothing doesn't do anything mmm sorry I'm just no one is acting realistically in this and I remind you this is an old adult fiction story so it's meant to be taken seriously it's not it doesn't have the leeway you would grant a young adult story you can't just write off something unrealistic as oh that's just character a's worki behavior it doesn't work like that I am supposed to see these government agents as a legitimate threat and you've got them giving her minimal guard over a ridiculously long travel time we're not done yet by the way she's still on the ground she goes through three helicopter rides a jet ride to an aircraft carrier and another jet ride to a second aircraft carrier they even have one airman who gives her some thermal underwear because when she's put on the plane the jet loaded with the atom bomb you know to kill her in which she will die three has handed a the thermal underwear and is told you'll have this if you want it it gets cold like you won't believe up there you're going to kill her why are you bothering with this what really draws this out is Teresa keeps trying to wax philosophically throughout this it's thinking about human condition all in all bad relationship with Steve of course eventually it gets back to God and she provides the worst display of intelligent design that I have ever seen look I'm not here to harp on religion or anything like that but if you are going to believe in a god or a higher power or whatever please have a better argument van peebles Analects could not be material alone and could not be hardwired to understand any concept presented to it the human mind held universal ideas beyond the reach of matter and evolution the intellect could not be made of matter nor could the human soul operate on its own so intelligent design is a thing because intelligent thought cannot be manifested into the physical reality oh it gets dumber though it continues with this but most of all the unselfish self-sacrificing goodness of my mother father and Steve was not something that could exist in animals so your argument is that animals cannot be kind [ __ ] my cat comes up to check on me when I have a bad day at work and I would totally bring her on screen right now if she weren't napping on the bed okay a lot more bigoted we get every detail as she hops between all these different carriers she still has the garbage bag of coke eventually she does get to the second carrier in which she will be loaded onto a jet armed with an atom bomb which will be sent up to 63 thousand feet in the air where it will detonate probably killing her and how they are taking forever to kill this chick I just wanted to get this business done she's as bored as I am she gets out of the jet onto the second aircraft carrier where a dozen officers are apparently watching them the officers seem shocked to see me I guess they had not been told the person being executed was an 18 year old girl it was lucky everyone else was below deck I could have caused a mutiny accepting this incredibly stupid ideas this overkill using an atom bomb to kill a single person accepting that this statement is stupid because it goes back to the point I made earlier about keeping your troops up to speed with all the information because now you wouldn't have moments where they were shocked up oh my god it's a girl and he wouldn't apparently have to risk a mutiny but it gets worse the oldest looking officer said they didn't tell me you were a girl I was right they hadn't known the people about to kill her don't even know what she did at this point why is anyone following orders these aren't terrible orders believe it or not when you get to this position you're you swear an oath to defend people you don't just blindly follow orders and kill people with an atom bomb without some sort of a very good explanation not realistic but wait it gets worse there were three female officers in this group the captain probably thought the condemned man deserved a last look at females that is so awful that is that is remarkably disrespectful to your officers first off way to object the fire own officers these are not just new hires who just boarded the ship these are actual women of rank second this is so openly sexist then I'm not even gonna touch it I'm just gonna hand it to whatever remnants of tumblr there still are and let them deal with it but because no one was given orders because no one was given an explanation for what's going on one of the female officers steps out of line and pulls out a cell phone and SC eye violations so severe she should be court-martialed on the spot nobody had been given a protocol so this young woman pulled a cell phone from her pants pocket and boldly walked around to the government men until she was almost in front of me she held up the cell phone and activated the bit video mode do you have anything to say she asked she is recording what is clearly supposed to be some sort of a highly classified operation the fact that not only is she allowed to even start this start a video but no one moves to stop her is shocking I'm sure all the members of the military watching are pulling their hair out how brazen a disregard this is for all sense of protocol I'm not even military and I pissed off at it this is basically a chance for Teresa to do something inspirational you know some brave final last words it is so trite I once read a famous quote by the Shawnee Indian chief Tech whom say I am certain I got that wrong about singing a death song and going out like a hero I had rewritten it for more universal use never dreaming that I'd use it for myself so soon if people grieve your passing rejoice in the good you did and die like a hero going home I feel good about who I was that's all she has to say she talks about rejoicing and the good she did but we don't have any details on the good she did she joined the baseball team she got superpowers she was on TV she talked to a couple of people and I am honestly struggling to think of anything more significant than that oh she went to college and married her husband there you go nothing significant they get her into the jet I climbed the ladder and awkwardly got into the cockpit still carrying the garbage bag of coke bottles why is anyone allowing this I mean I guess they're putting her in a thermal suit and hooking her up with oxygen you know so she doesn't get knocked out before they blow her up with an atom bomb so everyone's shrugging and just throwing just saying [ __ ] it to protocol the garbage bag of coke made it on two other Jets up to this point so what I'm confused by is who's piloting this jet because I don't think anyone is suicidal enough to actually because they're gonna blow off the jet with the atom bomb it's not going to escape the blast radius and and there's no apparent pilot and why the hell would Theresa know how to fly it or even agree to I am assuming there's an autopilot program but that's never confirmed the jet just flies up like magic but Theresa immediately starts her escape plan as soon as she's in the air she rips off the seatbelt harness and she immediately went goes to work tearing open the coke bottles I grabbed the garbage bag of coke bottles and put it in my lap I uncapped a bottle poured the contents on the floor tore off a small piece of garbage bag wrapped it over the opening of the empty bottle and screwed the cap over the plastic covered neck that would make a watertight seal the bottle went inside the jumpsuit under my left armpit I did the same procedure with a second bottle which went under my right armpit and a third bottle went on my left side a fourth bottle went on the right she does this with all eleven bottles which will apparently keep her body buoyant when she rips open the canopy and jumps out into the ocean I want to point something out her plan to get out of all this was to use a bunch of coke bottles as floatation devices after jumping out of a jet but she got all the coke bottles before she was told she was going to be put in a jet and blown up that way she bought 12 bottles of coke for no other reason she didn't know how they were gonna kill her she otherwise was dragging around all the bottles of coke for no reason [Music] this is such lazy story crafting Norman had to artificially jam in a solution because he was not clever enough to think of a way to save his protagonist in any other way you know the one with superpowers she could have rushed off pushed her way through while she was on just at any time really not just when she was on the carrier and like jumped on a a lifeboat and sailed off that way and have that crap out or maybe they fired a shell at her and it blew up the life craft and she was left floating in the ocean cuz they can't find her okay that's it's still a bit of a stretch but it is far better than what we got here [Music] instead she jumps out of the plane at let me just double check at about fifty four thousand feet but she still has enough wherewithal to stretch her arms and legs out and adjust her angle so that she's kind of falling spread-eagle and as soon as the ocean comes in comes up close once again I covered my face with my arms my body made a hard belly flop I was knocked out Theresa just did a fifty-four thousand foot belly flop not gonna lie that's kind of epic she somehow figures out that she's in the South Atlantic far below the equator I'm not sure how she really figured that out because it's not like they were giving her directions but whatever and she passed out and that is the end of empress Theresa this is fourth chapter I'm this far in and I've been talking about all the mistakes and all the fuck-ups in this book however long this video has been going this has been one of the most amazingly difficult trials I have ever had in any kind of a book I am exhausted my throat hurts from screaming the character that in all the characters are garbage nothing they do make sense everything exists purely to serve Theresa and make her look good there is not a shred of realism even within the concept of this being a sci-fi fantasy book there is not a shred of realism anywhere there the the idea of there being alien goo God powers are okay I can accept that I cannot accept everything else this is so dumb this is so amazingly dumb but you want to know what's bad what's really bad the section I've read to you so far is the best most realistic part of it it gets so much dumber so much dumber wait for that this is gonna be a multi-part er I am NOT sitting through more of this I need a break so come back next time whenever I can work up the sanity to actually go through this book again I'm going to go sit down I'm exhausted [Music]

Channel: KrimsonRogue

Views: 1,349,843

Keywords: Theresa, Empress, Book, Review, Comedy, Fantasy, Religion, Norman, God, Mary Sue

Id: JopR-biL0I4

Length: 102min 22sec (6142 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 11 2020