Well, the first thing I can tell you is that after the daunting prelude I fell right into the thing. So, I'm bad at reading club, particularly when I'm not walking through it section by section with others. In the week since the first 38 pages, I've consumed another 800 or so and am making my way through book three now.
The first Chapter depicts the maddening of Ern Vernall and drops the reader into a life in 1865, which is the start of many times the reader may find themselves appreciating the soft cushy existence we have been born into. I was mainly left feeling jealous of the supernatural encounter that sends "Ginger" round the corner.
The second Chapter is to date still the easiest read, and puts you smack in the middle of the mind of a crack whore (Marla). This chapter again reminds me of my soft cushy life, though this time there's not the century and a half of separation. If you're feeling misfortunate, this chapter might well cure you of it.
The third Chapter, Rough Sleepers, introduces the ghosts - and was the first chapter to really suckerpunch me. How an entities sense of self-worth could hold them in bland purgatory. The scene at the Trilliard game, though, really floored me.
These first three chapters set up the events that kept me turning pages, the things that kept me on the journey waiting for them to be resolved.
The fourth chapter throws you waaaaaay back in time, I'm not even certain how far - but ties in with an encounter Freddy had in the third chapter. It sets the foundation for one of what I'd consider one of the most major themes, the history of a place, that is thoroughly explored in book two.
The fifth chapter "Modern Times" drops you into the place about 100 years ago, and seems to mainly be a juxtaposition of personality types and approaches to life with some of the more pivotal characters - though I certainly may be missing something. It's the introduction of at least two characters that later get their own chapter, May and Black Charley, and it may be this introduction that predisposes the reader to a fondness for those two.
The sixth chapter is Henry's (Black Charley), and seems to be in no small part more history to add depth and immersion to the setting and the story.
... and by this point of the book I'd been turned into a monstrous consumer, devouring page after page of this gargantuan epic with little personal reflection - which leaves me little I feel I have worth saying on the subject. It's an epic, and not for the faint-of-heart reader, but to those acquaintances I think are up to the challenge of reading it, I heartily endorse doing so ;)
