Chapter By Chapter> Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image chapters 42 & 43

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.

Two very short chapters today as we focus on the Striker side of the mission. Last time we got more proof that Op-Center has gotten a lot more competent since last we saw them.

So we have two short chapters, two and three pages respectively, that barely form a complete chapter by Chapter By Chapter count rules. If I were reading these books on my own, and I do try to enjoy my reading experiences for these reviews, it wouldn’t matter. For review purposes however, and with how many chapters this thick paperback has, reviewing two pages seems a waste of time.

I was taking to someone who has read other Tom Clancy novels but not the Op-Center series. He had heard that the stories were quite dry, and that is a concern as well. A lot of it reads like a trivia book that happens to have a story in it because at times it really doesn’t connect to the story beyond “hey, want to know the history about this location, weapon, or tool?” while occasionally telling us information about characters that we don’t need for a story. Your writing guide may have information about a character that you’ll never use but will help inform how you write the character and how he/she would approach a given situation or comment. We the reader don’t need to know every detail if it isn’t going to affect anything. It’s the overdose of worldbuilding that has really weakened my enjoyment of the book, but it’s better than the previous novel.

With that, we have two chapters so let’s get them read.

Chapter 42: Tuesday, 9:13 AM, Seoul

This is what I’m talking about. These two pages are more flavor than taste. It’s just about readying the Mosquito for flight, talking about all the training, trivia about the guys watching Russian activity…it doesn’t really push the story at all. As a movie or show it might make for an interesting visual but as a novel it just feels like wasting the reader’s time. And because every scene change is a new chapter in these books it becomes a waste of a chapter when nothing happens of any significant importance. They work harder because it’s the real thing and not a test with a different plane. That’s it.

Chapter 43: Tuesday, 4:05 AM, the Gulf Of Finland

This was slightly better. We check in with Peggy James and David George as they try to handle being on a submarine while putting their plans together. They figure out how Commie Op-Center is running their operation, try to come up with a plan of attack, but the sub slowly rocks Peggy to  sleep and David says he’s getting tired as well. She decides that his youthful energy doesn’t stop him from being competent and able to pick up the Russian that James is managing to teach him. The story sort of moves forward, as we get to see them preparing for the mission, and what flavor text there is about Peggy and Fields-Hutton do not pull away from the story or feel like time is wasted.

So a tale of two chapters, as it were. The first is unnecessary and just filled with a bunch of info we don’t need in a scenario that would work better visually than in prose, while the other at least shows two of our heroes prepping for their mission. In the end I don’t know that either was necessary besides padding out the page count, but at least 43 has benefits that 42 lacks. There’s a Douglas Adams joke in there somewhere but it isn’t coming to me.

Next time we’re back to a full length chapter and back to Commie Op-Center. Can General Orlov stop the coup on his end?