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.
Running late tonight but I’m just coming off sick leave. This is where I would make a joke about this book sending me back there but this last act has seen an improvement now that the Op-Center team is actually part of the story and not just padded series set-up. Whether or not the trend continues we’ll have to see.
- Chapter 68: Wednesday, 7:20 AM, The DMZ: five pages
- Chapter 69: Tuesday, 5:30 PM, Op-Center: three pages
- Chapter 70: Wednesday, 7:35 AM, The DMZ: 2 1/3rd pages
Bouncing between the two hot spots. What that says for Kim Hwan we don’t know yet, but there are otherwise three locations of importance; well, two and Op-Center. The DMZ and the North Korean missile base seem to be the important locations for the main story right now. I guess right now the DMZ is all that matters, but is the Op-Center scene important or just a chapter break pretending to be a chapter?
The first chapter in today’s trilogy actually has a second scene, a rarity for this book. I think it’s the second or third time. I don’t think the author understands chapters, or maybe I’m wrong. I thought the chapter provided a good place to stop and either think about the story so far or get back to the outside world; a good dose of reading but a good place to break. This book does it for every scene so seeing two scenes in one chapter is odd. And it’s not like we haven’t had one-page chapters previously. This one has Schneider getting the word from Herbert what Op-Center needs Gregory to do, and Gregory getting the message. However, he makes the mistake of walking rather than riding back with Schneider from wherever he walked off from, and gets attacked by Eyepatch. This would be a good place to break the scene but still a rather short chapter.
As it turns out the next scene does matter and addresses the missiles, as they finally get the true satellite feed up and running, only to see missiles pointed towards South Korea, but also Japan. The “let us kill each other” conspiracy is trying to make this a world war, which Gregory was thinking about. I wonder if that has anything to do with the attack in the Sea Of Japan? They may have agents in the pachinko place as well, trying to ensure Japan enters the war. If China believes the North and sides with him, and given both Korea and China’s history with Japan in the last world war this could be an Asian bloodbath. This when the team Mike forced himself upon will finally get involved I assume.
Back with Gregory, he manages to chase off Lee with his lit pipe (the smoking kind) and chases him back to the tunnel where the poison is, managing to get a signal off that he hoped Schneider would see. And given that Schneider first found him from the match when he lit his pipe that’s a nice bit of foreshadowing. Gregory may also get a bit of revenge against the man who killed his wife before this book is through, even if it’s just to bring Eyepatch in for trial.
If the book had been this interesting and fixed their chapter problems (these three should have been one chapter) this would have been a much better book. We have another 18 chapters to go as this book uses chapters and I’m as interested as I should have been in chapter 18 but wasn’t. This book started and continued badly but maybe it will actually end on a high note. We’ll have to see what happens next time.
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