Forum:West and East

I was thinking we might enjoy having a central venue to discuss W&E as we read it, like we used to do with TL-191 on the old EZBoards, and MwIH on whatever that short-lived successor board was called.

I've read the first three chapters and, while I have a hard time even remembering who all the POVs are, I've probably seen most of them reintroduced by now (including Josef Lemp). So far just about everyone's done the bare minimum he or she needed to do to set the tone for the rest of the book. As expected, McGill introduced Shanghai in a ho-hum way; if you can't tell an interesting story set in Old Shanghai, you must be catatonic. The only minor surprise was that he introduced Vera right away; I was kind of expecting a scene or two before we watched him meet her and go through a bunch of romance novel cliches, though he'd still have to pay her for a shag. Peggy, whom we've pegged as a breakout character, spent her entire scene recounting her experiences of the previous novel to an extra so inconsequential we don't even have a first name for him. The Japanese soldier tickled my curiosity by opening up with the Siberian Tiger; it added a real sense of wonder and awe to the wilds of North Asia which I hope holds up, since the fact that he's in North Asia is the only thing that sets him apart from most other POVs. Well that's not fair, anything he shows us is pretty much guaranteed to hint, at least, at something original in this story, since the Siberian invasion is really the only radically new element HT added to the war in the last book. Otherwise, the only character so far who's given any indication that her story is going to go somewhere is Sarah Goldman, and the direction she's indicated--a coming-of-age romance story with Isidor Bruck--holds so little promise of being interesting HT might as well trade her in for her brother and give us our hundred and fifteenth soldier POV. In an effort to find entertainment value, I find myself reduced to wondering whether Isidor is some sort of kin to Herman Bruck. Turtle Fan 06:29, July 29, 2010 (UTC)