Social Media Unenthused To Learn JK Rowlings Latest Book Is A Thousand-page Thriller About Online Trolls

J.K. Rowling's latest novel under her pen name Robert Galbraith, titled The Ink Black Heart, comes out tomorrow, but right now, many critics and fans don't seem very excited.

The cause for this appears to be two-fold. The first is that the book is a mammoth 1,014 pages long, which a negative review by The Times deemed unnecessary. The second is that it appears the book can easily be interpreted as an airing of grievances against her "online trolls."

✍️ JK Rowling's new thriller sees a female celebrity hounded by self-righteous children's fantasy fans.

Read the full review 👇 https://t.co/ewl7gNY3WG

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 27, 2022

The Ink Black Heart is Rowling's sixth installment in her detective novel series starring the boldly named Coroman Strike. While the series has been relatively well-received up till now, The Ink Black Heart is the second since Rowling essentially went public with her anti-trans views in June 2020. The series' fifth installment, Troubled Blood, generated controversy for having its main antagonist be a "cross-dressing" serial killer.

While that fact generated a significant backlash against Rowling, as many interpreted it as Rowling putting her anti-trans views in her novels, the news that her sixth novel centered around "online trolls" struck many as comical, as though she were attempting to own her haters over 1,000 pages.

According to a review from Telegraph, the plot of Ink Black Heart finds Coroman Strike and his partner Robin investigating the murder of a young-adult content creator, and the suspects include her adult fans angry that "her fantasy characters have been accused of embodying racist or ableist tropes."

Rowling's own work has often been accused of enabling racist tropes, such as making the bankers in the magical world of Harry Potter hook-nosed goblins, which has been often criticized as playing into anti-semitic tropes. Telegraph also reports, "There’s a gag about Social Justice Warriors decreeing that a talking worm in the cartoon is a transphobic dig at 'non-binary kids' because it’s a hermaphrodite."

Though Rowling has publically denied that events and plotlines in her book were inspired by events in her very public real life, it seems many in the media and social media did not buy that explanation. While early reviews have mostly put off judging the book by its associations with Rowling's various controversies, social media has largely had a field day with Rowling seeming to fire a literary shot at the haters she's dealt with on Twitter.

lmao this is like the second time she's written a book as a revenge fantasy about how she gets owned online what a joke pic.twitter.com/iAqr4nxHDm

— Hag🔞 (FFXIV6.2, cardgames, gacha aaaaaaaa) (@PowerfulHag) August 27, 2022

jk rowling's book : https://t.co/6FHGeEVWKq pic.twitter.com/KGFtoOkzTp

— LEHA 🏳️‍🌈✨ tired and bored (@veegender) August 29, 2022

JK Rowling’s next novel will be about a super very attractive and very smart and very funny 57 year old who is struggling under the crippling burden of having too many mansions

— Deadweight (@corobonii) August 29, 2022

One hopes the series' seventh installment will find Coroman Strike tackling issues less parallel to Rowling's personal life, lest she slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob.