Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.
I’ve come to realize just how little has happened in forty-four chapters and 200 pages. So much time thus far has been spent on character histories that don’t matter in this story, as if they’re setting up the whole series rather than just this book. It’s unnecessary padding for flavor text that just shows off their world-building. This is how long it has taken them to even start investigating stuff since the early chapters. With viral attacks, characters you can’t really care for, and histories that have no impact on the story to define character traits that may or may not influence the series of events this book ends up longer than it needs to be.
Right now, Hwan and Donald in Korea is trying to stop a war being started by a group of extremists who want to kill each other. The title character are fighting a computer virus while the man in charge is worrying about his son and his second-in-command is off playing soldier…and by the way they still aren’t there. I don’t think 24 works as well in this book as it did on TV but I didn’t watch the show. I’m only invested in part of the story while the other half keeps slowing and bogging things down. At least we have two chapters filling the length of one rather than three or four, but I’d still rather only review one chapter at a time. It’s in the article series title after all.
- Chapter 45: Tuesday, 10:05 AM, Op-Center: 6 pages
- Chapter 46: Wednesday, 12:30 AM, outside of Seoul: 6 pages and a few lines of the 7th
Is South Korea really a day plus off from Eastern Time? Man, time zones are bizarre.
I have two people at Op-Center that I actually like, Paul Hood and Matt Stoll. This chapter we look at Stoll’s attempt to find the problem, aided by Phil the environmental guy and Matt’s pal at the NRO. Finding the photograph that shows what time the mess started, and doing that enhanced zoom that’s probably impossible with real technology even today but fiction breaks out all the time, they find the evidence that it was faked. Guessing in part how it happened they have a better shot of tracking the malware behind this. Matt is also willing to give credit where it’s due when it comes Herbert even though they don’t like each other. Matt’s just a cool guy who makes mistakes. You can be flawed without being an @#%hole and still be smart enough to earn your position. Plus in an earlier chapter we learned Matt is a Mighty Mouse fan so he can’t be all bad. It’s nice to see at least one Op-Center investigation actually being done and moving ahead towards the day-saving part.
Back in Korea, we have Hwan and Chong heading up to a cottage where she (Chong…too many Kims) passed her information. There’s a lot of back and forth as to why she’s helping and her own story. This is backstory done right, as it highlights Chong’s character and motivations. So much of the backstory has been flavor text padding; again, showing off their story bible more than telling their story. You don’t have to fit in every detail of the story bible, just let it influence how you write the characters and bring in details where needed for the story, for the audience to understand why the character is doing what he/she/it is doing. (“It” is more sci-fi and fantasy than what’s here but the point stands.) Even new character Cho, Hwan’s driver, works for the story and introducing his reactions to all this. Meanwhile, they’re being watched by someone on a scooter. How will this factor in? Sadly we’ll have to wait a while on that one.
So here we have two good chapters that I wish this book had better resembled up to this point. Interesting character, moving the plots and subplots along, and backstory that actually matters to the events we’re seeing. I wonder how long this will last? It looks like a bunch of short chapters are coming our way so we’ll see next time. We’re passed the halfway mark but it means there’s still more of this thing left. We shall overcome.
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