Yes, it’s time for a new book. I just finished my third Star Trek novel, which was my overall 23rd book to review. That book was introduced to me when I found the sequel and enjoyed it enough to look into the first book. The 24th book in our series is a sequel, but not to that book. I like to go in cycles: one licensed series, then an original story, then a different licensed series, then another original, and so on. We’ll return to Star Trek at some point if we’re still hopping about, but not this time.

What I am doing is returning to an original series I reviewed the first book for, and really didn’t like. The characters were not the heroes I needed or deserved because they weren’t the best examples of humanity. The one-shot heroes were more interesting and they won’t be here. We’re stuck with the unlikable characters, but I didn’t know that when I bought this and the next sequel I’ll possibly do down the road.

Still, they did fix the weird chapter issues from the previous book, but that was more a review format complaint than a reading format complaint. That was the lesser sin but that will make this easier to review. Though I guess I’ve stalled enough for the homepage intro. For those of you who haven’t been around to guess, the next book in the Chapter By Chapter review series is…

Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image

The second book in the series co-created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik, and allegedly written by Jeff Rovin according to the internet, Mirror Image returns us to America’s remote spy organization. Using field agents, satellites, the internet, and other technologies at their disposal, the National Crisis Management Center, or “Op-Center” only has one group of on-the-ground combatants as they try to save the world without a lot of violence and death, keeping world peace without causing international incidents or big upheavals. The concept is fine. It was the characters that ruined the first book for me. I also did a shorter book report over at The Clutter Reports if you don’t have the first novel to read along with me.

The only character I can remember the name of is Paul Hood, because he was the only one I liked. As the head of Op-Center he tried to run a smooth ship, but that wasn’t easy considering his second in command wants his job and ran off with the field team to relive his glory days while benching a perfectly good soldier, his secretary wants to bang him because after her husband ran off with another woman she now only dates married men, and two of his other members hate each others guts. The one-shot characters in Korea had better personalities and a more interesting story, but the first novel also had to introduce the series regulars, and shoving them in was sadly part of the task. Now that we’ve been introduced to these putzes, maybe whoever is the writer will fix those issues. So what’s the plot this time? Let’s read the back of the book:

The Cold War is over. And chaos is settling in. The new President of Russia is trying to create a new democratic regime. But there are strong elements within the country that are trying to stop him: the ruthless Russian mafia, the right wing nationalists, and those nefarious forces that will do whatever it takes to return Russia to the days of the Czar.

Compared to the current Prime Minister in the real world, who is trying to restore the USSR because he’s former KGB and wants that power back. This was probably not the best timing for this selection considering as of this writing they’re trying to re-absorb Ukraine to start that process and there’s a war going on, but I already teased it without the full details. I bought this book because we had it at the store at the time when we still sold novels, and I didn’t know I’d dislike the first novel as much as I did.

Op-Center, the newly formed but highly successful crisis management team, begins a race against the clock and against the hardliners. Their task is made even more difficult by the discover of a Russian counterpart…but this one’s controlled by those same repressive hardliners.

Seems like an odd time to do the “evil twin” story like this. We’ve only seen one victory by Op-Center and they barely pulled that off, but two other missions happened prior to the book, one of which was apparently a disaster. This investigation of a bombing in Korea opposing any talk of Korean unification nearly became their second disaster thanks to their own mistakes and occasional stupidity, easily getting themselves hit with a virus at the worst possible time, the in-fighting, and just the cast in general. It was the Korean operatives and the field infiltration team that saved the day, not the Op-Center people. Maybe wait a few stories until they’ve gotten out of their rookie year proper and have a better track record, then drop in the other group to give them a new challenge.

Two rival Op-Centers, virtual mirror images of each other. But if this mirror cracks, it’ll be much more than seven years bad luck.

A powerful profile of America’s defense, intelligence, and crisis management technology, Tom Clancy’s Op-Center is the creation of Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik–inspiring this and other gripping novels.

I’m just hoping this is better than the last one, given I ended up not liking the first one. At least on the reviewing end, each chapter has numbers. I don’t know if I can do a chapter at a time. It will depend on how short it is, but now with chapter numbers I can tell you this will be…SEVENTY-EIGHT CHAPTERS? Oh, good gravy, the only thing making this an easier read than Seduction Of The Innocent is that even this book with shorter chapters couldn’t possibly be filled with that amount of stupid unless book two really did go downhill from the first one! We may end up doing multiple chapters just to get another book at least started before the end of the year. I have plans for the Christmas season, but we’ll see what happens when and if we ever get through this book. And remember, dear readers…

Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter (or possibly multiple chapter for this one) 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.

We’ll begin our reading next time with the prologue and how many other chapters I feel we need. See you then.