A Long and Sporadically Updated Comprehensive-ish Review of Empress Theresa

The Beginning

COVER: Dear god it’s bad. Apparently Boutin drew it himself. I guess he was too attached to Theresa to hire a professional to render her. Sadly, it seems as if it’s the best part of this book.

INTRO: It starts with two quotes from later in the book as well as a bible verse. The bible verse is fine, nothing wrong with that, but adding quotes from your own book at the beginning? Weird. They’re bad quotes too: “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 (Boutin) “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 (Boutin) Such deep, thought provoking quotes. /s

Chapter 1

The book literally starts with Theresa bragging about how awesome she is. I wish I was kidding. She goes on like this for a hot while. She compares herself to Hitler (bad move!!) and claims she will be remembered longer than him, Churchill, and Lincoln. She also claims that no one remembers Charles Martel, even though the fact that he is mentioned proves that we do still remember him. She really makes some bold claims. I am currently working in between writing this part of the review, and I am doing my actual job so I don’t have to read anymore of this tripe.

She goes on for a little while longer, talking about pressures and stuff. I skimmed this because it’s boring as hell. After that, she mentions an “incident” that happened before she was born, in which her mother saw a fox and they stared at each other for a little bit. This is fairly important in the book, but IRL this would mean nothing. It’s a fox, for Christ’s sake. Oddly, she mentions this in the middle of another story she was telling, which is certainly a choice that was made. The story she tells is from when she was 10 (the timeline is a bit jank, but that will be relevant a little later). She’s chilling by a pond when a fox (the same one from before) comes out of the woods and walks up to her. Then this weird white ball of light comes out of the fox and enters Theresa’s stomach. I know the mental image you have right now. It’s not good. This is worded so poorly that it sounds horribly inappropriate. Theresa freaks out and runs home (understandable). Her older sister Catherine is like “It’s a fox chill out” and Theresa just kinda goes up to her room to ruminate. I don’t see why she didn’t tell her older sister what happened, but whatever. She then hears some firetrucks and goes to see what’s happening. Apparently, the firefighters are trying to find a fire that does not appear to exist. Somehow Theresa just divines that this has to do with her because she’s built different or something. They’re looking for a fire because the temperature in the area had suddenly jumped way up. Eventually it goes down, and they leave. Weird. Spoiler: Theresa radiates heat, which is why the temperature climbed. This is barely relevant, just like most of the details in this “book”.

A couple of days later, Theresa discovers that there are vans waiting outside in her neighborhood and she immediately assumes they’re watching her. She calls the pizza place to try and confirm that the feds aren’t listening to her phone line. I don’t understand what this does but it happens. A lot of things happen in this book. That weekend, Theresa and her mom go the mall and a man follows them. She does the same trick she did with the pizza number and finds that they are indeed intercepting her calls now. She watches 2001: A Space Odyssey. She then names the entity living inside her HAL, after the computer in the movie. I’ve not seen that movie, but I highly doubt these two HALS have anything in common.

A random government lady gives Theresa her number, who unquestioningly accepts it because she’s stupid or something. I’m not exactly well-versed on how government agencies operate, but I don’t think it’s like this. Theresa calls her. The lady’s name is Jan Struthers and she and her fed buddies have been interested in Theresa ever since the encounter with the fox. Jan gets Theresa to tell her about what happened that day. Apparently, HAL is an alien entity that somehow got to Earth and made a home inside Theresa. For some reason, very few of the agents stalking Theresa know why they’re doing it. While this is certainly classified information, I feel like it’s stupid to not inform the agents of why they’re doing their job. It’s just gonna make them incompetent and prone to mistakes. God this book is hell. I already have a page of notes and this is not even through the first chapter.

Theresa then gets an aimbot. Cool. This is barely relevant. She talks about irrelevant stuff. She then starts fifth grade. This is where the janky timeline comes in. From what I understand, Theresa was supposed to be younger, but Boutin aged her up and didn’t edit the book so that would make sense. Please keep this in mind as the book goes on.

Theresa gets super-strength and accidentally breaks a bottle of steak sauce (who the hell keeps steak sauce in a glass bottle, anyway?). Honorable mention to this banger of a line: “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” (Boutin).

Huh? What?

Anyway, she goes to her priest, Father Richard Donoughty, and tells him about what she’s experiencing. I keep thinking “Father Doughnut” whenever I read this fool’s name. I guess Boutin tried to make him have an Irish name but didn’t bother with much research. Jan comes and talks to Richard and he agrees to keep his mouth shut. He tells the Cardinal and they verify that Theresa is not possessed.

Some time passes, and Theresa gets to skip from 5th grade to 7th because she’s smart and because she has long, thick hair… Not sure why this would be a reason, but Boutin clearly has a fetish. This is like some sort of sick absurdist comedy. Theresa talks a little more with Jan and then her family moves to Boston. Thank god this is the end of Chapter 1.