Chapter By Chapter> Op-Center: Mirror Image chapter 1

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.

Last time was just the prologue. This time it’s the first actual chapter.

At least that’s one point in the novel’s favor, the way the chapters are done versus the original book. While it was more annoying due to this review format than anything else, I do prefer chapters that I can point to versus having to remember the time stamp and location. I am concerned that this book will share one mistake with chapters so short it’s hardly worth splitting into another chapter, especially when it feels to me that they could have been the same chapter because the events are so close together. I’m not sure, being more of a comic or short story writer than a novelist, how one goes about deciding when to put a chapter break in their story. I’m sure it’s probably different for each author and project, with no set-in-stone rule. Still, any novelists out there, I would love to see you post a comment about your decision making process.

I haven’t come across a too-short chapter yet, obviously, but I am expecting one given how many chapters are in this book and the last book’s switching chapters every time you changed rooms. This one is eight chapters, so it will work for me. With that, on to this chapter.

Chapter 1: Saturday, 10:30 AM, Moscow

This chapter focuses on the man the now dead guys in the car were discussing, Nikolai Dogin. He is joined by fellow compatriots who were hoping for a return to the old Soviet regime, but the people chose his opponent, Kiril Zhanin, and his push further into capitalism and presumably a more democratic republic situation like the United States, though they actually mention Germany and Japan as examples of what Russia will be turning into. That’s interesting, given that Russia fought both countries in World War II and the driver from the prologue clearly wanted to fight the Germans. Dogin could easily be a Putin stand-in, except Putin won and is trying to restore the Soviet Union and Communism. Also, going after Ukraine is one of the situations considered by Dogin and his little think tank of Commies hoping to “restore” Russia to what it was, believing fear is better than freedom.

It is an interesting look into how this group at least views Communism, that the people need more control rather than “experiment” with controlling their own lives. Dogin even tries to get them onboard with his plan by playing on their version of patriotism and the goal of restoring the USSR at the expense of the people. To that end, Dogin reveals his Commie Op-Center, officially the St. Petersburg Operations Center, which according to Google would translate to “Sankt-Peterburgskiy Operatsionnyy Tsentr”. I’m going to call them Commie Op-Center for now though. Dogin even proves how successful Commie Op-Center is by showing that despite not being fully operational he’s already managed to spy on them, noting one guy’s “personal interests” as part of his proof. The Center, hidden beneath the TV station our dead guys worked for, making me wonder if that was a hit yesterday (in book time) or someone’s bad driving, is about to go into full operation in a few days. For now he’s going to play the gracious loser, but he has a plan to restore the Russia they believe is needed. The one with them in power, of course.

Commie Op-Center is shown to be like regular Op-Center. They have a spy network tied to satellites and a field team for military maneuvers. I’m curious if they’re bigger jerks than our regular team given they’re communists or if I’ll end up hating them less than the original team. Actually, I’m worried about that given my opinion of the original team. They also weren’t shown to be that competent since the first book started after a failed mission, they allowed themselves to get a computer virus, and they weren’t exactly the most upstanding examples of American humanity. Now they’re going up against Commie Op-Center, which should be worse examples of humanity but may end up being more competent. We’ll see what happens in the following chapters.