 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to Thursday Theorist. Today we are talking about Stephen King's newest book, Elevation. Yeah. If you've watched my review of this book, you already know I didn't like it. I'm going to go ahead and go into why I didn't like it. In my review on Goodreads, I said Die Hard Conservatives will hate this book because of the gender politics or identity politics and SJWs are going to hate this book because it literally has a straight man needs to help the lesbian woman win. But the problem with that is, before I get into anything else, the problem with that is not just that she needed help. The problem is the straight man inserted himself into the situation. Had he not been there, she wouldn't have had any problems, she would have won anyways. But he put himself into the situation just so he wouldn't have to feel bad about the whole situation. Now I've been talking to several different people. There is a certain type of person that's going to love this book. And if I'm honest, it's going to be straight white men are going to love this book because it makes them out to be a hero. And that's fine, whatever. The problem with it is when you have this message over here that says, you know, this, I guess, subculture or whatever, this minority needs my help. I must be the great white hope and save them all. But then you have to cause a problem to be able to fix a problem. That's like starting a war and then coming along and ending the war and then everybody's celebrating the fact that you won the war. It doesn't work that way. I'm sorry. So besides that, I don't want to hear any political nonsense down just story wise. That's some bullshit. Just the plot hole, the huge plot hole there bothers me. And that, more than anything else, is what bothers me about this book, is that it does not make sense. Also there is a section in the book where they said, okay, well that's the whole point of being an ally. King's trying to bring us together. Okay. My argument for that is simple. Toward the beginning of the book, the main character, Scott Carey, gets into an argument with some, I guess, some conservative guys who don't like the fact that there's a lesbian in town and this lesbian couple has opened up a restaurant. He almost gets into a fist fight with them. Now, with that in mind, we fast forward to the end of the book where just because the main character helps the lesbian woman, helps her to win the race, all of a sudden the entire town sees the errors of their way, I don't understand. I guess it's something to be said for compassion, but it was also compassionate that he would approach those guys at the table and say, hey, you know what, I don't like what you're saying, isn't that rude, so on and so forth. And then come at the end, it's very forced and it did not ring true. I have always known Stephen King books to feel real even when they're supernatural stuff. It always feels real. He always bases it in reality. This book is pure and utter fiction. Nothing in this book would happen the way you would go. Now, talking about the supernatural aspect of it, there's no conflict. The main character is losing this weight and yes, there's going to be some illusions to thinner, but there's two completely different things because Scott Carey, the main character in here suffers zero, zero bad things happen to him. Nothing bad happens to him. Nothing at all. There's no consequences for his weight loss until the end of the story, and then he just floats off content. Like, is he done with life? Is it like this world's horrible and I'm just going to float away? It just doesn't make any sense why he would just decide that allowing himself to die or just giving in to floating off into space. Nothing about this book makes sense. I'm literally upset, but once again, my problems with the story are not political, not motivated in any way by gender identity, any of that. My problems are with the story. The story doesn't make any sense and Stephen King forced it just so he could get his point across, and that's the worst thing you can do with literature, I feel. I'm sure there's going to be plenty of you that disagree with me. That's fine, but we're going to get on to, like I said in the review, if you watch the review of this, any political comments are going to get deleted just right out. I'm not going to respond to them. I probably won't even finish reading them. Now, if you want to talk about the story elements, why you like them and dislike them, that's fine. Just don't go on any political tirades. I don't want to hear, well, history W's are ruining the world, or the right wing alt-right. I don't want to hear any of it. I don't. And I know it's coming. That's why I'm trying to tell you guys, stay away. Just don't. But the connections as far as, see this is a, actually I'm going to stop there and I'm going to say, this is the reason why books like this bother me. Because all it does is it brings up, there's more division here, because King's only talking to one side of the playing field. He's not talking to everybody. He's only talking to one side, because people of the mindset that homosexuals are evil, or they're sinful, or whatever it is, they're going to read this book and they're going to roll their eyes. That's not the way to bring about what he wants to bring about. What he is doing here is self-serving. I'm sorry, it's the truth. But then I have to come along and to finish the series, I have to come along and talk about it and my comment section is going to become toxic because of that. And that's unfortunate. But the dark tower connections are also forced. It happens in Castle Rock for no other reason than it just needs to happen, than it happens in Castle Rock. He mentions the inside view. He mentions the night flyer. He mentions all that stuff and I've connected all that stuff. But as far as the Thursday Thera stuff is concerned, there really is nothing else. I mean, it's just another oddity that happens in Castle Rock. It's another reason why I didn't care too much for the Castle Rock series because there's no cohesion. It's just another weird thing that happens in Castle Rock. But I've connected Gwendi's button box to the Stephen King universe and I'm going to connect it the easiest way possible there. I have no other theories, mainly because I didn't deep dive into this book because I didn't enjoy it. Will I ever reread it? Sure. Sure I'll reread it. But I've gone on way too long. Again, this isn't meant to be political. The problems I have with the story are with the story. It doesn't have to do with the politics. If you want to label me, I'm on the same side as King. If you want to rant and rave about politics, about Trump, about anything like that, go somewhere else and do it. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been the Thursday Theorist Review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!