BW Media Spotlight

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.

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