Novelty's DOR Review - Chapter 24

[Novelty]

This was the chapter where Dan bombed davey to radioactive atoms, but it got rewritten to end not with a bang (pun intended) but with a wimper.

 

The dialog with Ithuralde is just classic Dan/Davey, and although I smirked a few times there at what was actually being said, the whole episode felt a bit out of place for me. I wonder why that entire section was included in the first place... it looks like it's there to "pad" the chapter.

 

The PE bit was OK - the usual showcase Davey's life in school sort of thing. Somehow though, there is a subtle difference between this scene and the scenes from the earlier chapters. The entire scene seemed very bland - nothing sticks out in my mind and seems almost forgettable.

 

The last part of the story is what this chapter is predominately about. The tension is being built up as it nears the end of the chapter which I thought was good. It also shows that Dan has been doing heavy duty research, from Venezuela's oilfields to the Chinese/Soviet politiking in the 80s.

 

Somewhere along these 24 chapters, I realised that I am no longer as interested in DOR as I was with DO. While pondering why this is so, the reason I came up with was that the major difference between the two is that in DOR, everthing seems more drawn out. DO was more focused - it was the story of Davey. DOR, although still the story of Davey, has branched out to involve a lot of things on the periphery - events in Europe and Asia and South America which, although are good background infomation, widens the scope of the story to the entire geopolitics of most of the world at that time. That has been a major distraction from the main story of Davey, yet I have no idea how it can be redone since those events impact Davey's life, even if only indirectly.