The heroine-villain interaction is presented with technical precision. The two characters, who have already met, approach each other through the course of the novel and have a big showdown near the end. He is defeated but captured, not killed, and, at the very end, we learn that he has escaped, killing two guards along the way. The Army had not believed the warnings of Intelligence. (This will remind some readers of the policeman who does not heed Blomkvist's warning about a prisoner in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy.)
Will Horst be killed at the end of Volume III or live to fight in Trilogy II? And how will this alternative twentieth century history unfold? Will the protagonists manage to avoid (their equivalents of) World War II, Holocaust, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, nuclear stockpiles, Cold War, terrorism, many major wars despite "deterrence" and ecological catastrophe? Or could even more horrific events occur? Stirling knows how to write dystopias - Draka - although his Conquistador and The Peshawar Lancers are, if not utopian, then at least optimistic in tone. Let us hope that the Black Chamber is able to recover that sense of adventure in a new century and does not follow the path of the Draka into systematic repression.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I like Horst, so I would prefer to say the heroine and HERO of THEATER OF SPIES gradually approach each other with meticulous precision.
So, the US Army blundered and managed to allow Horst to escape? Good to know the Germans are not the only ones making mistakes! Over and over I see the Germans persistently making mistakes in Intelligence work that Dominic Flandry would never have committed. It was exasperating, really! And a point to keep in mind about Horst is how he LEARNED from those blunders, both his own and those of other Germans. And tried to get thru their thick heads the all important rule of not being blindly arrogant and underestimating their enemies.
I too hope Horst survives the three BLACK CHAMBER books. Will he rise to lead the General Staff?
Absent Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler coming to rule Russia and Germany, it's hard to think anything as horrific as the gulags and the Holocaust could come to pass in the Black Chamber timeline. But I agree anything is possible in both real and fictional history.
Sean
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