 Dead babies, she chanted to herself. Dead babies, dead babies, dead babies. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. OK, so does anybody remember The Chemist? Probably not. It was written by Stephanie Meyer, who is most famous for writing the Twilight books, which are, I mean, I don't need to explain those. They were a series of books that got huge, spawned a million copycats and spin-offs. Then they had Movies Made, which also got huge, spawned a million copycats and a million spin-offs. And she also wrote The Host, which, while it wasn't as big of a success as Twilight, did still sell a lot, and it did still get a movie made with Cersei Ronan and everything. And as a brief aside, I will say that The Host is much worse than Twilight, even though no one ever really talks about it. It's mostly just because it has weird sexual assault undertones, which just make me deeply uncomfortable. But that's not what this video is about. The Host and Twilight are bad, yes. But The Chemist was also written by Stephanie Meyer. And it's not like this was a recent book, so people haven't heard about it. It came out in 2016. But it also wasn't like her first published novel, and she wasn't a big name then. She was a pretty big name when this came out. And it was apparently a bestseller, but I've just never seen anyone talk about it. Even her more recent stuff, like Midnight Sun, which is just Twilight from Edward's perspective, that came out in 2020. And it has twice as many ratings on Goodreads as The Chemist does. So it made me wonder, what is it about this book that no one has ever heard of it? And I read it, and it's pretty bad. So I'm just going to spend a few minutes going over it in spoiler-filled detail. So I'd say it's slightly better than Twilight. And it is pretty funny some of the time. But overall, it's pretty bad, and I don't really recommend it. So this book follows the adventures of the main character, who they call her Alex later on. But at the beginning, she just straight up does not have a name. She's just referred to as she, she, she, forever. I'm going to call her Alex throughout this review for the sake of simplicity, but I do want to bring that up because it's extremely annoying. Sure, in a visual form, that could be fine if we don't know their name. I've seen movies do it before, like Serenity. Chichuel Ejiofor's character is just called The Operative and because he doesn't have a name in the movie. And that's, that's fine. It works. It's a movie. And maybe she also could have gotten away with it if it was first person because then we don't really need to know her name necessarily. But she's just, she doesn't have one for quite a while. And after a while, they start calling her Alex. But we also learned that her original name before she became a spy and everything was Julianna. And she also has a code name, which is Oliander or Oli for short. So she's getting referred to by all these names and it's really obnoxious and difficult to follow sometimes. But anyways, the book starts off with Alex just being on the run. She's already been on the run for several years. She used to work for a government agency called The Department. It's so secret it doesn't even have a name, not even a nickname, which would at least give it some character. But OK, whatever. It's like she's been on the run for a while. They've been trying to kill her this whole time for one reason or another. We don't actually know at the beginning. And she has managed to keep herself safe by just being super paranoid as a spy, you know, keeping a low profile wherever she sleeps. She sets up booby traps and stuff. And because she's like a genius with chemistry, hence the title of the book, The Chemist, she really doesn't use firearms or anything to take people out. She usually sets booby traps that will like fill a room with poison gas or something, which seems like a bit much, if I'm being honest. Like, sure, it's mentioned in the book that she doesn't really use guns because they'd be easier to trace back to her. And they're more expensive and OK, sure. But you can buy guns illegally. Like, I don't recommend it because if you get caught, you're looking at a very long prison sentence. But like, you can do it. Like, there's black market arms dealers and stuff out there. And if she's a spy, she should be able to find them. But again, OK, whatever. So basically, the whole first chapter is just her explaining what her life is like now, that it's on the run and how it's terrible. And she, yeah, OK, whatever. And then one of her old bosses from the department contacts her, says, hey, we don't want to kill you anymore, we need your help. And rather than thinking, OK, this is an obvious trap, she just decides to go for it. And she goes out to meet with him. And before she even goes out to meet with him, I know I keep going on tangents, but that's important for this beginning part. Before she even goes to meet with him, it goes over all of her spy gadgets and stuff that she still has, some of which she's made herself, some of which are from her old days in the department. And most of them, again, all revolve around chemicals and stuff, rather than a pen that's a gun. She has syringes hidden on her person and stuff, which, OK, sure, if you're going to go for a theme with that sort of thing, I don't actually mind that much. But one or two of these are just stupid. Like, for instance, she has these little earrings, which are little glass globes, right? And if the glass breaks, then it'll release poison gas. And she'll know to hold her breath, but anyone nearby won't know to do so. And according to the book, if anyone grabs her hair and yanks her head back, that'll be enough to break them. That's a crappy delivery system. I feel like that would also break if you just turned your head too quickly or something. Like, just a lot of little things in this book which are not thought out. OK, anyways, her old boss talks to her about how there's a biological attack impending and how some bad people have a virus, which they're planning on releasing and killing a bunch of people and classic spy thriller stuff. The actual means through which they're going to kill a bunch of people aren't super important. The fact is, they're going to kill a bunch of people. And eventually, she agrees. And they give her some information on this guy who his name is Daniel. And they just tell her, hey, capture this guy and get some information out of him so we can figure out what's going on. And so she goes to Washington, DC, where Daniel works and lives. And she manages to capture him by pretending to be just a pretty lady who's interested in him on the train. And then she bundles him up in a car and drags him off somewhere in West Virginia in the middle of nowhere. And she sets up this whole chemistry lab, basically. And this is where we find out that before when she worked for the department, she was an interrogator. And basically, she tortures him by injecting him with various chemicals, which caused him severe, severe pain. And look, this is the point where I really started to hate Alex as a character because, well, for a couple of reasons. One, torture does not work. This is not my opinion. This is not a debatable thing. This isn't me talking about the morality of it. Objectively speaking, when you're trying to get information out of somebody, torture does not work at doing that. And it just annoys me when stuff portrays it as though it does work. And number two, Alex fucking tortured people for the government. And at no point in the book is it really thought about how, hey, maybe that was kind of a nasty thing that you used to do. And it'd be one thing if this was a book about a morally gray character. That would be fine. That might even be interesting if it's done, right? But it's not about a morally gray character. It's about a person who is treated as being a good person. And it's never acknowledged that she did a lot of terrible things. And nor does it ever really affect her personal relationships going forward, mostly with Daniel, because, again, she tortured him. Please keep that in mind as we go forward. She tortured him for hours at this stage. So she asks him a bunch of questions about what he's up to, what he's doing. He claims that he's innocent. And then she shows him photographs of him in Egypt and stuff, meeting with terrorists and whatnot. And he's like, hey, that's not me. And her first thought, her first thought, when she realizes that he's telling the truth, is maybe he has dissociative identity disorder. Maybe this is just another personality coming out of him doing this. And I'm just, lady, lady, how is that your first thought? Did you think that maybe the people trying to kill you for several years might be setting you up right now? Did that ever occur to you? Because that's exactly what happens. Like another man, who's also a spy dude, breaks into her lab area and attempts to kill her and is also attempting to rescue Daniel at the same time. She manages to subdue him and his trained attack dog at the same time. And then she takes off his mask and realizes, hey, wait a minute, this is Daniel's twin brother, Kevin. So Daniel literally had an evil twin who was a spy. And Jesus Christ. And this sequence also opened up my next big problem with Alex, which is that it tries to treat her as being vulnerable. You know, it has her being on the run for years and years. It limits her arsenal in terms of weaponry and stuff. She can really mostly rely on chemistry. She, it wasn't like a field agent beforehand. So she can't do all the crazy martial arts moves or anything of somebody like Jason Bourne and James Bond. Like no, she is just not a normal person, but she's closer to a normal person and she's being attacked by all these spies and everything. So it's trying to treat her as though she's a vulnerable person. But at the same time, it has her getting out at these crazy situations without too much trouble. And it has her knowing a lot of useful information, which maybe she shouldn't know. And it's just, look, in the spy thriller genre, it's very common for the main characters to be some sort of crazy Superman who's way above everybody else, like James Bond is a very good example of this. But if they wanted to do someone who is more vulnerable and just more of an actual character, I would have been fine with that. In fact, I think that'd be a major improvement, but trying to do both just does not work, you know? So I would rather that they had made Alex more vulnerable and had her have to rely on other people a bit more, like, because that would just make her better as a character to me. But at least if they leaned more into the Superman direction, that would be committing to something and not trying to have it both ways because it just does not work in this case. Like Kevin is an experienced field operative. He's armed, he's done this a lot more than her. He's also just a much bigger man than she is and she still manages to get out of it because she's just that cool. And it just, I don't know, I didn't like it that much. But anyways, once Kevin comes to, they all talk it out a little bit and it turns out, okay, this whole thing's been a big setup, like all the agents that have been sent after Alex over the past couple of years, which she has killed, it turns out they were members of the department didn't want anymore. So they sent them after her thinking, okay, either they'll kill her, in which case we're in the clear, like that's a loose end tied up, or they'll kill, or she'll kill them, in which case, that's another loose end tied up. So it works out for them either way. And I will say I did like this twist. That was pretty good. The actual delivery and framing of it could have been better but that was a nice twist, I liked it. And so all three characters realize, okay, we're in trouble, the government's hunting us, what do we do? And then they go on a road trip. The actual destination and reasons for going on a road trip are not super well explained at this point, but they go for a road trip and that is most of the book, actually. It's just them going from place to place and most of the time, nothing interesting is happening. At one point, a hit squad does come after them and they manage to take it out, again, because Alex is that cool despite being treated as vulnerable. And while she's interrogating, one of the hit squad members, she cuts off as pinky and flushes it down at toilets. It's an odd moment, but okay, it's really nothing too crazy, nothing I haven't seen before. And that really brings me to my main issue with Stephanie Meyer as a writer is that she's just constantly explaining all the minutiae of everything that happens. Like every event that happens in every day of every character's lives, life needs to be explained and quite frankly, this book is over 500 pages long. You can see it's pretty thick. A good editor would have cut that down significantly. Like it could have been 70% as long and it would still have told the same story. And it makes it a slog to read. Normally I would have probably gotten through it quicker, but it's a slog and it's boring. And eventually, while the characters are out on their road trip, they discover that this whole thing that they've been set up for did have to do with biological weapons. And basically the guy who was in charge of creating these bio weapons and is trying to cover up his involvement with them, his name is Wade Pace and he is now the vice presidential candidate. Okay, that's a little too similar to Mike Pence in my mind, because it just threw me off and every time I read the name Wade Pace, I was imagining Mike Pence in my mind. And basically the rest of the book from this point is them formulating a plan to assassinate Wade Pace and then doing the plan and then one of them gets briefly captured by the department and then they have to go and rescue him and Alex kills her old boss and then they run off to start a new life together and hiding again. And the epilogue is kind of weird. Like the events of it aren't weird, it's just the framing of it is weird. So basically the main character is all start a restaurant somewhere together and like that's their new life with their hidden identities. But the way we find out about this is in the epilogue a television producer for a reality show calls them and says, hey, we want you to be featured on our show and they say, no thanks, we're trying to keep a low profile because reasons. And the producer's like, okay, that's a little weird but if you change your mind coming back and like that just that's how we find out about it which is odd. And I know I skipped through that last bit quick so we're gonna go back a little. So the Wade Pace thing again, that's just, that's weirdly similar to Mike Pence and it just threw me off because this book isn't like an overtly political thriller or anything. You know, it doesn't seem like it's trying to be an allegory for American politics and it doesn't seem like it's trying to criticize anything in American politics either. It's like, it's just very vague. You know, they mentioned that Wade Pace is apparently a bad guy and we barely see him in this fucking book. So it's hard to really get a feel for it other than, okay, he did the bio weapons thing which is scummy certainly but it just, it's not that much more scummy than some of the other things that get mentioned here. So the idea that he's the ultimate target and the ultimate villain is odd and it's just so vague about all the politics other than briefly mentioning that the guy who Wade Pace is running with the presidential candidate is an extreme right candidate. And like, I get this came out in 2016 so it might be trying to comment on that somehow but it's too vague and too weak for me to get anything out of it. Like, I mean, I don't know what Stephanie Myers personal political beliefs are and I don't particularly care but you know, it's there. And throughout all of this, Daniel and Alex apparently fall in love which like, I know that's a pretty common trope of the spy thriller genre where characters just fall in love over the course of a couple of days or something but again, Alex kidnapped and tortured this dude for hours in very, very painful ways. Like it's described as being a horrific experience for him and within a couple of days, he's not only forgiven her and is willing to work with her for the sake of survival, which I could buy but he's just romantically involved with her and they're having sex and stuff. Stephanie, they're not even married. And then there's just issues surrounding the whole climactic plan to assassinate a vice presidential candidate. I think if I say that enough times in this video, the NSA will put me on a watch list so I'm gonna keep doing it. Like the plan doesn't have enough detail in it. There's not enough planning or anything and some things about it are just blatantly wrong. Like they mentioned how because he's only a vice presidential candidate, he's not going to have secret service protection. Like, yes he will. Like major presidential and vice presidential candidates get secret service protection during election time. That's a thing that happens. And just, you know, something that big which is supposed to be the big ending to this thriller, it needs more time to really sink in and at some point along the way in the plan, like usually something will have to go wrong and the characters will have to improvise. Like there's different ways to do it but it just felt way too easy in this book, you know? And that not in like a fun Superman-esque way where we're like, oh, Dirk Pitt, he does everything perfect the first time around and it's just cool to watch. Like it just isn't very satisfying and so that was a big disappointment. So yeah, that's the end of the chemist. It's not a good book really by any means but I will say that I respect how Stephanie Meyer got out of her comfort zone here. You know, it would have been so easy for her to just write more supernatural romance and I'm sure she could have cashed in on that too. Like Grant said, she already has more money than God but she could make a hell of a lot more if she just kept writing in that same niche forever but she didn't. She clearly just felt like writing a spy thriller and so she sat down and did it and the result isn't great but you know, I respect that she tried and I respect that she took a risk, I really do. And also she only wrote the one book like it's just one and done. It's not trying to be stretched out into a series or anything, kind of like The Host. You know, that's like, that's as much as I hate The Host. That is one good thing I'll say about it. It didn't try to get stretched out into a franchise and the thing is, yes, I was kind of vague and I did gloss over a lot of the details in this book. The reasons for that, well, there's two reasons for that. Number one being that I just don't really have time to go into excruciating detail with it like I often do because I could have. You know, I could have taken copious notes and gone in with all the tabs and everything, marking shit off. Like I could have done that but I'm already supposed to be doing that for Save the Pearls soon which as of the time of this recording, the fucking second book still hasn't come through the mail which is really obnoxious because I can't even really get started with whatever. I have to do that and then I have to do The Fifth Sorceress which is an extremely long series. So if I were to do that with the chemist, I would either be pushing those back at least a month or two or I would be having to push the chemist to the end of that and I wouldn't be getting to it until like, what, September or October and I don't really, I don't wanna do that. I just wanted to get it out of the way now. And number two being I wanted to leave some of those details for other YouTubers to cover because again, no one ever has talked about the chemist it seems and I feel like there's a lot of material to be mined there so I mean, if you really want somebody to go into excruciating detail about it and make fun of all the little moments that don't make sense, go bother strange aeons or Amanda the Jedi or something. They'd probably get a kick out of it and anyways, that's about it. The chemist is not good but it's slightly better than Twilight. If you've watched this bar, thank you. 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