Chapter By Chapter> Tekwar chapter 29

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 previous chapter Jake managed to get some well-earned payback…for a change. We also have an idea of which of our various factions in play was involved with whatever happened to the Kittridges. In case you haven’t been keeping up our factions are:

• Cosmo Detective Agency: hired to find the Kittridges though Walter Bascom is hoping to use the anti-cyber drug signal to end Tek, at least until a countermeasure has been created because drug dealers are evil.
• Sonny Hokori: Tek dealer. You can guess why he would be involved, either to stop the process or gain a monopoly by eliminating the competition’s supply.
• Bennett Sands: bankrolled the technology though possibly for potential financial gain.
• International Drug Control Agency: You can also guess what they’re involvement is but so far all they’ve done is say hi very rudely.

I won’t spoil who the bad guy is on the homepage in case you haven’t been following along, but those of you who have let’s see what Jake is going to do with that information.

The first segment is a nice character moment, and as memory of my original read back in the day tells me a bit that comes important later in the book. Otherwise this would all be Jake recapping what he learned from Vargas before Warbride terminated their relationship…by terminating Vargas. Bethdroid talks about “her” grandfather and a place Beth once ran away to, which tells us something about the real Beth so important that Bethdroid sees it as clearly as what she did yesterday. Also, it appears Bethdroid is growing rather fond of Jake. Curious to see where that goes.

Especially since the next segment shows that Jake may share some of those emotions…except she’s not the real Beth. Anyway, looking for trustworthy contacts he calls Cosmo and find out that Gomez is out of the hospital against doctor’s advice and happens to be there. Also that the secretary has dropped the android look, which is nice. Gomez lists a couple potential contacts and tells Jake that Kate, the ex-wife, is trying to contact him after learning he’s in Mexico. I’m kind of with Gomez on this one. Whether or not she and Sands were an item and she claims to be moving around, the fact that it takes going to Mexico could mean one of two things. One is that she is still tied to Sands and the other is a concern that he’s looking for their son, which while I’m sure he’d like to see the boy hasn’t been a priority. Either way probably letting her know where he is, considering Sands could at least be spying on them because she knew about his release from prison somehow to leave that Dear John v-log and under the circumstance it might be better to leave a message through Gomez.

To her credit, “Beth” isn’t annoyed that he wants to talk to Kate. We get some more look into their marriage and how he ended up on Tek, as well as the case that led to his false conviction. If you’re reading along you already know the situation, and if you’re just reading the reviews that’s up to you but not really the intent of this article series. (Although it would explain the lack of comments if not for how few comments my articles get.) I’ll still leave that so you have something should you pursue the book yourself in the future. Thankfully we’ve stopped bragging about being in the future and are just focused on the events and characters. So Jake goes off to meet the contact, asking Bethdroid to take a message if Kate calls. It’s another good character moment chapter all around but not one that halts the story to make it happen. We have the time and it’s all important information to learn more about the characters and move the plot along.

Where is Jake going and what will happen next? Tune in next time and find out.