Chapter By Chapter> TekWar chapter 28

Chapter By Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at a 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.

In our last installment it took two chapters to get the story going since chapter 26’s cliffhanger didn’t seem like the right spot to end on while chapter 27’s actually worked as a cliffhanger. We’ve met Warbride and brought some questions to her status as good guy, her jealous boyfriend Vargas, and Jake got to get some punches on him even though he took a few to get them. The shocking revelation I won’t list on the homepage-appearing section because you should only be spoiled if you read along and we are nearing the end of the story.

We’ve eight chapters to go so there’s still some time to wrap things up. However, that will require a lot less time spent on how in the future our story is, one of the recurring problems of this story, and getting on with the investigation. On that end, let’s get on with the reading.

Jake still believes the Kittridges are alive because too many people are trying to stop him from finding them, and a lot of those parties are tied to Tek and the professor’s chip-trashing machine. He even thinks Vargas is one of those parties and jealousy wasn’t the reason for trying to bump him off. I’m not sure where he came to that conclusion, but this does give us a chance to learn that Warbride (or Elena, as Jake knows her) lost a brother to the high-tech drug and doesn’t want to do something the President would do. Just because I’m questioning Warbride doesn’t mean she’s wrong about the people in charge, you know. So they head off to confront Vargas with the truth. I wonder if there will be any more punching?

So it turns out both of Jake’s theories were right. Vargas did try to kill Jake out of jealousy, if anything he says is to be believed, but also admits that he knows more about the crash…mainly that it wasn’t a real crash. Vargas wasn’t part of the operation but did take money to keep their people out of the way…paid by Sonny Hokori, the big Tek Lord whose name has come up numerous times thus far. Vargas isn’t sure if Hokori has the professor and his real daughter but he knows where Sonny is, and I’m betting that’s where we are headed. Then Warbride kills Vargas, no longer believing anything he says. After all, his actions even suggest he was keeping the money for himself, not their coffers, as he keep claiming “oh, I was totally going to tell you until this guy showed up”, appears to be lying about not knowing Kittridge was a professor, and trying to bump of Jake behind her back in the first place, not even knowing he was around. Even Jake thought that was kind of cold, using her new self-given name, which makes her happy.

So was the cliffhanger well-placed? Maybe. On the one hand it felt like a good place to start, but on the other the rest of the scene in Jake’s cell could have fit in last chapter. Granted, this chapter would have been too short as a result. In the end, where the story was split does benefit this chapter. How will the next chapter fare? We’ll find out next time.