Chapter By Chapter> Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image chapter 47

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 we followed our heroes in Russia, this time we’re following our heroes in America.

There’s something I noticed last chapter. This book has been going on for so long that I’m forgetting things from the beginning of the book. Maybe they didn’t plan on someone reading a chapter a week, but I also can’t remember ever doing that with other books. Occasionally I might have to check a name I haven’t heard in awhile, but I do that in the real world. I mean things like Fields-Hutton’s spy gear, what characters did at one point or another, and it’s because this book is so long and so stuff with useless trivia and worldbuilding that I can’t hold all that information. Stuff gets lost and that doesn’t benefit the reading. I can tell you moments from TV shows I saw years ago, books I’ve read (again, I still have to look up names because I’m lousy with them unless they really stood out) are easier to recall than this one. It’s just a lot of noise blocking the story and that’s not a good thing.

And we have another 20-something chapters to go, even with combining the shorter ones. So we better get started.

Tuesday, 6:09 AM, Washington, DC

Going into Paul Hood worried about disappointing his family is good flavor text. Going into the night manager (for lack of a better description) is just padding. And maybe that’s the problem with all the useless trivia. It’s just padding for a book that’s way too long.

There’s not much else to say about the chapter but what there is may be important later. Both halves of the Striker mission are moving into position, as Paul is informed. There’s also somehow time to add Mike Rodgers and Paul both talking about whether or not Russia is being so easily fooled. Rodgers is sure that the old system is gone and there’s no way they’re able to follow Striker’s plane, while Hood wonders if the Russian machine is really that dead. Technically they’re both right. Commie Op-Center they don’t yet know about but if it wasn’t for them Rodgers would be right that nobody’s really monitoring them. Since it does exist, Paul is at least right that they have a way to know they’re coming while at the same time Dogin is trying to put Russia back under communist rule and in charge of the Soviet Union.

I had to look up Eival Ekdol to see who he was, as he’s mentioned as someone on the news talking about working with the Ukranian Opposition Force, going on CNN to talk about how they aren’t happy with the Russian incursion. After getting past a similarly named Batman villain, he’s the guy who set the bomb that started all this. I know this is all a distraction for Dogin’s takeover but it does make you wonder what’s really going on over there and how many lives will be lost before it’s all over. The timing of my reading this book is still so weird.

That’s this week’s chapter, and there are still many to go. I feel like I’ve been binge marathoning a TV show. I hate binge marathoning. And yet I’ve only read a chapter a week. I’m not watching a season, I’m watching a whole series. It’s not even a bad series, just a rather boring one. There’s still too long to go.