Previously, Jake sits in silence for two chapters’ worth of flashbacks in front of the head of campus police (presumably) about not getting into any more fights, and then he immediately gets into more fights with secret liberal assassins (or something). And he’s been SEEN.
Also, I made the bold declaration that I didn’t think the authors of a book so small-minded were actually worth doing any background research on, and was then proven wrong in the wildest way possible when I learned that William W. Johnstone died fifteen years ago and he now exists as a brand ghostwritten by his niece. Which I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess will be a better plot twist than anything that’ll actually happen in the book.
Trigger Warning: Chapter 7
The book does my favorite thing where it wants to turn the most obvious thing about a new character into a big reveal, so it bends over backwards describing how Jake “took in several details about the person who had just spoken to him” before letting us know they’re a woman.
After all, women could be dangerous, too.
Even women as attractive as this one. Maybe especially women as attractive as this one.
Everything about this old man yelling at clouds-ass novel is extra wild now that we know that this book had a female author. The patriarchy is one hell of a drug, y’all.
She just stood there with her hands in the hip pockets of the jeans she wore and looked at him.
This isn’t an important sentence, but there was no way in hell I wasn’t going to let you guys know that her hands were specifically in the jeans she wore, as opposed to the jeans she didn’t wear that day, that were lying on the ground, or had draped around her like a shawl.
Jake and this mysterious (and dangerous???) woman start talking, and it’s boringly mostly an infodump. She tells him that she saw the fight that had just broken out, that Antifa has been “patrolling the campus for any signs of extremist, right-wing aggression and oppression”. She even tells him about the two kids whose lovers’ quarrel he broke up in the first chapter, for some goddamn reason.
“I know those two—Craig and Annie—and their relationship is fraught with drama, as the literature professors might say.”
I like how the implications are that this is a world where professors are only capable of using figurative language that corresponds to their discipline. The chemistry professors would say their relationship is unstable! The philosophy professors would say their on-again-off-again relationship speaks to the absurdity of existence! NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO SAY DRAMA OUTSIDE OF THE ARTS.
Worst of all, all of this is flirtatious.
“You’re a professor?”
“Criminal justice. Dr. Natalie Burke.”
“I’d say that you don’t look like a criminal justice professor—”
“But that would be sexist, exclusionary, patriarchal, and oppressive,” she said sternly. […]
“I surrender, Doctor. What can I say, I’m an evil cisnormative heterosexual. I can’t help myself.” He smiled. “Say, does that mean I’m mentally ill? That cuts me some slack. I’m a disadvantaged, oppressed minority. On this campus, for damn sure.”
Dr. Burke laughed. She looked a little ashamed of herself for doing so but couldn’t seem to help it.
I mean, this isn’t our first bad book rodeo. No way we get through these book without these crazy kids going to pound town. Even if their chemistry is utterly inexplicable, given, you know, everything about this book.
“[The Antifa patrols] must not stay very busy. How many people on this campus aren’t progressive idiots? A dozen? Two dozen? I’d say we’re all outnumbered.” He paused. “And I apologize if you’re a progressive idiot.”
“You’re an obnoxious young man, aren’t you? In addition to being a violent one.”
“I speak my mind too bluntly sometimes, I suppose. Free speech,” Jake added dryly.
Dr. Burke tells Jake that she’ll call 911 because she found the injured men, but not mention Jake. And I guess at some point before all this is over she’ll fall for his free-thinking, unapologetically cisnormative allure. …somehow?
Trigger Warning: Chapter 8
Day one with our hero Jake Rivers is finally over (hashtag blessed) and we move ahead, learning that the confrontation between Jake and the Antifa patrol (which I have to reiterate is an actual summary of this book) was the big news story for a few days until it wasn’t.
In almost all the news stories, Jake was referred to as “alt-right,” “far right-wing,” “extremist,” “white supremacist,” “Nazi,” or accused of being a member of the KKK—even though the trouble had had no racial component whatsoever.
Does Trigger Warning have a point about how, in our modern world, everything is pulled out of context as it gains traction in the outrage cycle? Are we as a society too quick to turn our attention towards the new thing to get angry about that day without anything deeper than a surface-level analysis?
A point equally worth considering: Trigger Warning and “surface-level analysis” have more chemistry than Jake and Natalie do.
“Am I allowed to say you look nice?” Jake asked. “Or is that a microaggression?”
“Coming from someone as big as you, I’m not sure a microaggression is possible.”
That’s right, Jake and Natalie are flirting again, and this dialogue is GEM AFTER GEM AFTER GEM.
“You look different this morning,” Dr. Natalie Burke said.
“Why?” Jake said. “Because I’m wearing a suit?”
“You look like a professional wrestler pretending to be a businessman before a match.”
“Babyface or heel?”
“Oh, you are definitely a babyface, Mr. Rivers.”
That made him laugh. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the sort to watch rasslin’.”
“My dad loved it. I watched it with him. It’s silly, but entertaining. At its best, almost existential.”
I like how Jake was like “babyface or heel?” before he was like “wait, this lady professor at a liberal arts college likes wrestling?????”
They talk about how surprisingly no news has gotten out about the other fight that Jake got into on the fateful day they met. They wonder why. Sparks are flying.
“Why didn’t the press make a big deal out of it?”
“Because the school wants it kept quiet for some reason?”
“That’s the only thing that makes sense, but why would they do that? Liberals never hush up anything that might make a conservative look bad.”
“Not everything in life breaks down into terms of liberals and conservatives, you know,” she said. […]
“One person’s forward is another person’s backward.”
She smiled. “That’s almost perceptive.”
Jake then goes to a meeting with the school president. Despite being told he could bring legal council (which Jake does not, for some reason, because Jake is one of our “just knows what’s best” heroes, I see), Jake finds to his surprise that the president is also waiting for him alone in his office. This is apparently suspenseful.
“No, I just wanted to have a talk with you, man to man.”
Jake felt a stirring of concern inside. Maybe he had underestimated this man.
Maybe Pelletier was more dangerous than he had thought.
And with that, literally nothing about the last two chapters of this book makes sense to me.
If you enjoyed today’s post, please consider buying the BBGT writers a cup of coffee? That’d be swell of you!
Wait, Day One of this story took SEVEN CHAPTERS?! We are entering House of Night timeline territory.
To be fair, two of those chapters were flashbacks, bookended by Jake sitting silently in the same meeting. Which is a bit of a one step forward one step back sorta situation.
Hey, technically draping jeans around yourself as a shawl is a way of wearing them, so strictly speaking we can’t be sure she hasn’t done that, clearly even more specificity was needed here
I feel like if I comment on the actual content I’ll just be saying “is this book real” over and over because like…is this book real
Is there no law regarding fraudulently marketing a book as written by an author who had no involvement and is actually dead? I clicked on the link, and it looks like that author did write westerns when he was alive, which explains the review you quoted. Joyce got scammed! She should at least get a refund.
you would THINK, wouldn’t you? poor joyce is the real hero in all of this.
Wait, was the original now-dead author who’s name is on these books also a crazy conservative obsessed with PC culture, or is this just the new brand invented by the niece? So many questions.
Also why would someone old enough to be a teacher at an expensive private college (or really anyone at all), be interested in flirting with Jake?
It seems the late William Johnstone wrote mostly western, pulp stories, survivalist stuff and so on. I haven’t read any of his books, but these genre are easy to write with a conservative “strong man” (not-very-sub)text, so I guess his niece hasn’t changed that much.
Their website pretends doesn’t mention his death at all and while her initials are in the banner, she isn’t mentioned either. So I guess whoever controls the Johnstone thing tries to keep a certain brand.
Because women are conditioned to want ALPHA MALES but PC CUCK CULTURE tries to shame them into pairing off with LOW-T BETAS, Jake would undoubtedly say, while rolling his eyes at clearly made-up terms like “heteronormativity” and “cisgender”.
Oh shit you guys….I lost track of reading the blog before ACOWAR even ended and I come back to this??? I love it. Best catch up ever.
joyce is DEFINITELY the hero of this and i hope she got a refund. (if she bought a kindle version i think she maybe could since iirc she said she only read like two chapters and then returned it).