#BookReview: Tenure, by Blaine Lee Pardoe and Mike Baron

The Punisher Targets the Woke

At BasedCon, I was on a panel with Blaine Lee Pardoe. Blaine said that he worked with Mike Baron on a plot that could be summed up as “The Punisher kills the woke.”

And away we go.

Story

Braxton is a classical history professor in Portland, Oregon. Sure, he served in the military, but he was desk bound once the army discovered that he could type 70 words a minute. Braxton has a lovely wife who’s a lawyer, and a daughter with whom he reads The Lord of the Rings.

When a student decides to kick up a fuss over her pronouns, Braxton’s life spirals out of control. He’s fired from his college. His wife is run off the road. He’s SWATted. The FBI raids his house at two in the morning. AntiFa vandalizes his home. The local authorities are on the side of AntiFa. The Feds want to make the “misgendering” into a civil rights issue.

Braxton has had enough. He will get justice any way he can.

Tenure is a perfect encapsulation of “the Current Year” insanity. Everything that happens to Braxton is a culmination of everything we’ve seen happen to public figures: slander, libel, SWATting by local police, midnight raids by the Feds, general harassment, lawfare and murder. Watching Braxton’s life get slowly ground to pieces by political activists and officials is tough to read. But it really does make it much more satisfying when the comeuppance hits.

If you’re someone like Razorfist, who wants to critique that there is no art or irony to Frank Castle’s style of retribution, there are elements where Braxton does take notes from the Shadow. I especially enjoyed one kill that relied on detonating the target’s electric car battery.

The World

Depressingly, this is the real world. The elements of corruption throughout the system are a little too real.

Characters

Braxton is a standard human being who just wants to do his job and stay out of the culture wars. He teaches classical history, and stays awake from modern politics. But like all normal humans, just because he has no interest in politics doesn’t mean politics doesn’t have an interest in him. When it does, there will be Hell to pay.

Braxton’s father is a former FBI agent who retired back when there was a possibility that the FBI wasn’t evil incarnate. When he sees Braxton’s family victimized, he’s happy to help with the retribution.

Faye is a reporter just looking into AntiFa locally. When the bodies start dropping, she thinks she’s on the trail of a vigilante. But no one on either side of this wants her asking questions.

Then there’s Ronin. He’s the obligatory tech support character that moves the plot along. He’s not exactly Frank Castle’s Micro, but he’s helpful.

Politics

Honestly, the politics is not right-wing. It’s more anti-Leftist than it is on the right. Braxton just wants to be left alone. He has some guns, but this isn’t Larry Correia gun porn. This is more classical (1780s) liberalism.

Who is this for?

Normally, we like to compare books to other books. But Tenure is more Death Wish or The Punisher than anything else. What starts as a revenge plot evolves into a mission that’s definitely going to make for a fun series.

Why Buy It?

This is a fun, solid novel with an interesting premise. I suspect it’s going to be an interesting ongoing series.