I Can't Believe We're Doing This Again. (RB vs. Empress Theresa, Chapter 1) · 2:59pm Apr 12th, 2021

Well hello there. I see you chose the former option. Congratulations; you get to watch as my sanity goes through the shredder. Please remember that it is entirely your own fault and, should you reach your limit, that you may check out at any time.
Like right now.
Right now would probably be a good time.

...

Alright, now that we've guaranteed that anyone who values their time on this planet is gone, it's time for the main event.
This is RB vs., the blog series where I try my damndest to make it through the worst books I can find. And the book this time is one that I'm sure some of you are familiar with.
I first came into contact with this book through the work of
Fredrik Knudsen and his lovely video on it way back in 2017. I'd say go check it out, but spoilers, so maybe wait until we're done here before looking at it.
Or don't. I don't really mind.
Anyway, the book is called Empress Theresa, by one Norman Boutin.
Here's the cover:

Here's the other cover:

If you couldn't guess, there are painted by the author themselves, as they proudly boast about on their website. Which is a hell of a ride in and of itself, but I'll leave that for you to discover at your leisure. You can peruse the book's study guide, if you'd like (and yes, that wasn't a typo, it really does have a study guide).
A lot of the notoriety of this book is actually related to the author, you see. They are... not exactly humble, we'll say.
I'm going to be avoiding talking about them, though, because there are plenty of places you can read about that. No, what I'm going to focus on is the book itself.
Did I mention that it's 468 pages?
Heaven help me, let's begin.

But actually, really quickly, I'd like to point out one thing:

"I'm very simple. I follow my conscience. I am what I do. If you think that's easy, try it for one day!
----- Theresa Elizabeth Sullivan Hartley, the World Empress
"Staying alive for me is like surviving a train wreck."
----- Theresa
“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.”
----- British Prime Minister to Theresa Hartley

These quotes are on the copyright page. This is literally the first thing you see upon opening the book. Quotes from the book.
Anyway, moving on.
So with One Extraordinary Time (OET from now on, acknowledging the full name is painful for me), we talked about the importance of the first few sentences of a story. First impressions are key. People may not want to judge a book by it's cover (although this could be an exception), but they definitely judge what's inside on the first paragraph.
Here's Empress Theresa's first paragraph:

I’m Theresa, the younger daughter of Edward and Elizabeth Sullivan, and I hope it’s not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age ten. Everybody in the family said so. 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.

Framingham, Mass. is an actual place, by the way. Population of 72,032 people in 2017 according to its surprisingly fleshed-out Wikipedia page. Looks like a nice place.
Back on topic, this paragraph is a paragraph that exists. It does. I've seen it with my own eyes. Thar she blows. There's not much else to say about it.
Oh, wait, yes there is. I know I said I wouldn't talk so much about the author, but there is one quote I'd like to slip in, here:

It's cliche to put a murder, explosion or something of that nature on page one to 'grab' the reader, but in Empress Theresa, the characters are the most important element of the story. The eye-popping scenes will take care of themselves later.

(This is the first thing you see when you look at the sample version on Boutin's website.)
So. Boutin believes that the characters are the crucial element of the story, the one that will keep things interesting and keep people reading.
Keep that in mind.
Theresa goes on to say that no one would have ever imagined what she would do a few years later. And then we get this:

Prime Minister Blair said I’d still 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 thirteen hundred 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.

Churchill, Hitler, and Lincoln, huh.
And then things take a dip in the philosophical. Just a dip, though.

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. The other kind is bearing responsibility for other people’s lives and welfare. That’s really tough if you care about them.

On the other hand, if you don't care about them, then there's only the thousand assassins you have to worry about, which is a-ok by me.
Are there even a thousand professional assassins left in the world? Apparently.
Anyway, I don't have to tell you how silly this idea is. You're all smart people.

I’ll be telling my own story which is a good thing

Is it?

The drawback is that there are some things I can’t know because I wasn’t there.

This paragraph continues with an example that spans about a page. I'm not going to show you any of it, because—

It’s a sure bet they discussed how to eliminate me if I got out of control, but I can’t know any of that. It can be frustrating not knowing these things.

Okay, this is getting silly.
I imagine that these little tidbits of information, like the above, and the thing with the assassins, are an attempt to create a question.
You see, one of the best ways to get someone hooked on your story is to give them a question that they want to know the answer to, and tell them that the only way to get that answer is to keep reading. I write detective fiction and horror, I know these things.
Here, though, I don't care about the answer, because it's the wrong question. And so they make Theresa sound edgy more than anything else.
Anyway, we eventually get to the actual start of Theresa's story, which begins thusly:

My story began quietly with no hint of what was coming.

This is in its own paragraph, as if it had any kind of literary weight to it at all. Really, it's just a rehash of the first paragraph, which makes me wonder what the point of any of this was.
But then, no, we can't actually start yet, because—and Theresa apologizes for this—we first need to talk about an incident six months from when she was born. So in the one chapter, we have:

Nineteen year old Theresa narrating
Ten year old Theresa, the main focus, and
As-yet-unborn Theresa in a flashback.

Anyway, the flashback event isn't that import—

This strange event seemed unimportant.

Yes, thank you Theresa, please stop doing my job for me.
Continuing, it's not important enough to warrant anything more than: "This one time a fox stared at my mom while she was pregnant."
Moving right along.
Now, back to ten-year-old Theresa. She's reading a book when all of a sudden, hey look! It's another fox. And it's coming towards her!
And here we learn that Theresa has no life-preserving inclinations, as she just stands there and waits for her inevitable demise by rabid wildlife.
I'm kidding. The book is too long to end here.
Anyway, the fox stares at her for a while.
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.

And right through the other side.

“What did you scream for?” asked Catherine who had walked into the kitchen.
“There was a fox out there.”
“He won’t hurt you,” she said, and went back to the living room.

This is Theresa's older and (by the narrator's own admission!) dumber big sister, displaying a complete and total familial negligence that will probably become a running theme in this book.
Anyway, Theresa then eats breakfast (she can cook, too, apparently) and watches TV for a while. Thrilling!

I heard fire trucks in the distance blaring their deep toned sirens. These trucks could be heard from a mile away. They were coming closer. And closer. Soon the sound made it obvious they were in the vicinity of our street. My intuition told me this had something to do with the white thing that jumped at me.

That's some sharp intuition you've got there. Sharp as a bowling ball, maybe.
Firemen show up. They are very confused, because there is no fire to be seen. Mysteriously, the temperature of the entire area around Theresa's house has risen to one hundred and five freedom degrees.
Any more brilliant flashes of intuition, Theresa?

All this happened within an hour. There had to be a connection.

Well there we go. Case closed.

Thermistor probes were brought from the station

A thermistor is, as the name might imply, a type of resistor; specifically, a resistor that changes the level of its resistance with temperature. Now, these probes might contain thermistors, maybe, but it's still a weird thing to refer to.
I just checked. Twenty-eight more pages to the end of chapter 1.
Buckle in, folks. This is where it starts to really get going.
Theresa wakes up the next day and greets her mother, who informs her that there's a van outside with people watching the house inside. Classic stakeout.

I sat on the sofa thinking for a while. I felt I was being watched. Or was somebody listening?

I'm listening, and boy you would not believe how much I wish I wasn't.

I spotted the phone. Was somebody listening on the phone?
I dialed 0 for the operator.
“Operator. How may I help you?”
“Can I have the number for Alice Pizza in Framingham?”
“One moment, please.”
Ten seconds later another woman said, “Alice Pizza, 555-8402.”
“Thanks.” I hung up. So they weren’t listening.

I want to know what she was expecting to happen if they were tapped. That's not how phone taps work!
Cut ahead to the weekend, Theresa and her mother go on a day-trip to Boston. Theresa notices that she is being followed. Then they go home.
That's it. That's that entire scene. I just saved you two pages. Be grateful.
Theresa calls the operator again when she gets home. And I guess we do get to see the other outcome, because this happens:

“Operator. How may I help you?”
“Can you give me the number for Alice Pizza in Framingham?”
“One moment, please.”
I waited. And waited. And waited. A full minute passed by and she hadn’t come up with the number yet.
I hung up the phone. Now they knew I knew.

That's still not how phone taps work! Wire taps intercept and record signals somewhere in the middle of the line. Any calls made by the tapped phone will still go through to their intended recipient, and there's no reason for operator to be the exception. Wiretaps would be pretty shit if that were the case.

Two days later mom took me to a 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.
I played and replayed the parts of the movie where the astronauts talked to HAL. The most chilling scene was when astronaut Dave Bowman left the spaceship in a pod to retrieve the body of his dead astronaut partner drifting through space. When he flew back to the spaceship, he said one of Hollywood's most famous lines:
“Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”
But the spaceship's computer, HAL, wouldn't open the door. It was a creepy scene.
The summer days rolled by.

I just love how this entire scene has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Boutin just really likes 2001: A Space Odyssey, I guess. Moving on.

Some woman I didn’t know was standing next to me. She looked to be in her early twenties and had a friendly smile.
“Hi,” I said with a young kid’s taciturnity.
“Do you have a cellphone?”
“Yeah.”
“Call me when you’re alone.” She handed me a piece of paper with a phone number.

Don't take that out of context. Don't you do it! Don't! Nooooooooo—

My curiosity about the watchers overcame my wish to keep HAL secret.

So this is a weird thing. At some point, Theresa started calling the thing in her stomach 'HAL'. This is never told to us. Not even in the bit where HAL was relevant. It just happens. Off-screen. For some reason.
Also, the implications of naming that thing HAL are... interesting.

“Hi” said the cheerful woman. “I'm Jan Struthers from the United States Government. Are you alone?”

Nooooooooooooooo.

My childhood was over. All I wanted was an ordinary life like everybody else. It looked like I wouldn’t get it.

Said no ten year old ever.
Jan starts grilling her in the friendliest way possible, which is honestly more creepy.

“We know a lot. Something from outer space came to Earth seven years ago. We’ve been looking for it ever since. That heat you were giving off has to have something to do with that thing from outer space.”

Wait, hang on. Theresa's ten in this scene, yeah? So she would have been three at the time.
So then, what was up with the fox staring at her mother six months before she was born?
It's time for the lightning round!

“I saw a fox walking near the water. It came up close to me and a white thing jumped out of it. That's all.”
“Where did the white thing go?”
“In me.”
“How big was this white thing?”
“Like a softball.”
“Did it come from the fox?”
“Yup. Came right out.”
“What part of the fox?”
“The stomach.”
“How did it jump out at you?”
“It moved in my stomach.”

“How long did that take?”
“Like that.”
I snapped my fingers at the phone.
“Did you feel anything?”
“Nope.”
“Did this white ball look solid like a steel ball?”
“Nope. Fuzzy like cotton.”
“What happened then?”
“I ran into the house and waited. Then I ate breakfast. I thought I was going crazy.”
“How long after the white ball jumped at you did the fire trucks 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 have you been eating lately?”
“Like I always do.”

I'm gonna just skip ahead a bit here, bear with me. Jan tells her to keep it a secret, blah blah blah... Oh, there is this:

Something else had made me wonder. “Why is the operator one of you guys?”

Wait... but... but then why did she... huh?
I think my brain just got caught in a bootloop. Where were we?
At some vague point after this conversation, Theresa wakes up one morning to find a small orange dot has appeared in the middle of her vision. And I know what you're thinking! You're thinking it's an aiming reticle. Well, I can assure you—

I got the rocks once more and walked fifty feet away. Nobody could hit the can from this distance. I threw. The rocks hit the can. So that’s what the orange dot was for. It was an aiming device. It got the rocks to whatever I was looking at.

—that you're absolutely right. We FPS now.

Interesting, but I couldn’t see any use for it.

Well, you must be blind, then, because I can think of plenty of sports teams that would want your number.
That was supposed to be a joke, but she actually does end up using it for baseball in the next scene. Which is boring, so we won't talk about it.

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.

Isn't that a bit morbid for a ten-year old? This kid's seen things.
Anyway, did you know? Glass is actually the strongest material known to man.

A little more effort and the bottle broke. Steak sauce spilled on the counter. A steak sauce bottle had particularly thick glass and should be unbreakable.
I cleaned up the mess and put away the rest of the food. I wanted to think. How had I broken the thick glass bottle which not even a strong man could have done? Did I have a lot of strength?

Remember kids, no matter how hard you try, you can't break glass. So have at it!
She then proceeds to lift a couch and bend a horseshoe.
Seven pages to go!
Theresa decides it's time to seek the help of the Lord, so she goes to see the pastor at their local church. Theresa's mom agrees to drive her to the church, even though Theresa refuses to tell her why. Or why she's bringing a bunch of horseshoes with her. Because she's a good parent, and there's definitely no reason why this would be a bad idea—
I'm stopping there.
Anyway, she bends the horseshoes in front of the priest, he has a chat with Jan, they decide she needs to meet with the Cardinal for some reason? And this clears her of demonic possession. Which was an issue. Apparently.
We now jump... about a year? Further into the future, and the most notable things they have to tell us is that Theresa skipped the sixth grade, and that her hair got longer. Riveting. So, to recap, we have: Nineteen year old Theresa narrating Unborn fetus Theresa Ten year old Theresa Almost-eleven Theresa.This was one chapter, folks. And, frankly, I feel a bit whiplashed.
At least it ends there. My god was this chapter tedious. Most of it should have been cut in an editing pass... if this book ever had one.
Remember how "[The] characters are the most important element of the story"? Yeah, this one's pretty elementary: Theresa is utterly bland as a character, right from the get go. She's like the bran flakes of characters. She's a good girl who does no wrong and has no real desires (at least thusfar). She wants for nothing. She needs for nothing.
And there's a reason for this. Allow me to share another couple of quotes from the author:

Theresa is the girl who has it all together. Her emotions, intellect and heart are well balanced, coordinated into a highly effective human being no matter what life persuit she endeavors. Too many stories have main characters with serious flaws. It is the 'politically correct' thing to do. Writing teachers say the characters have to have serious flaws. All right, but what does that teach us about how to live if you don't have serious flaw? Not much, in my opinion. I wanted to do something different.

Q: A protaganist with flaws would be more interesting.
A: A major theme of the story is that good people do good in the world. Giving her a drug problem or sexual promisuity would add nothing to the theme and distract from it... I didn't want a million women coming at me saying, "Thanks a lot! There'll only be one Empress Theresa and you gave us a drug addict and slut. You couldn't give us a better hero than that? You couldn't give us a better model for our daughters?"

Explains a lot, really.

Well, that was painful.
Quick bit of housekeeping, before we go: given that this book is long, and that the chapters are long, and that there are 28 of them Jesus Christ help me, these'll be going up every other day, rather than daily. Please don't misunderstand: this is for your sanity too, not just for mine. Prolonged exposure to this stuff is dangerous.
So: see you in two days, folks.

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