The Sword and Laser discussion

**Spoilers for the first half of the book**

The months nearly over and I'm only 80% through. This post is probably way too late but I've seen some chat about the content and wanted to talk about the structure.

Did anyone else find it a bit haphazard? Maybe the intent was to generate a bit of confusion in the same way that Harper doesn't seem to grasp how to control his new time travelling crib but in my read of the first half it ended up taking some mystery away.
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Specifically I'm talking about the chapter where Kirby is attacked. Which is graphically unpleasant but might have carried more weight if she didn't already have a full set of plot armour in place. I wonder if other chapter orders were ever trialled and how different the reading experience would be.

There are some other breadcrumbs scattered around too. Almost like a little warning bell for the alert reader.

I have a theory about Dan - the burned out, divorced reporter with an increasingly unhealthy obsession with his intern. So far only the murderer and the victims have had POV chapters...
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It was disjointed but I liked it. I might be odd in that way. I think Tamahome was quoting Stephen King's rules for writing and he (King) wrote mostly linear plots A -> B -> Ending. I'm fine with B -> A -> Ending if it is done well because I like seeing all the pieces come together.

In the case of Kirby you mention, flashbacks are a fairly common literary device (character is shaped by their trauma, extent of the trauma is revealed after you understand something about the character and lets you understand better why they are the way they are.) So yes, it takes away the suspense of the actual scene but it puts the pieces in place of, "That's horrific, I can see the source for her obsession."

Finished now. I was way off with the Dan pet theory.

I'm also a fan of non-linear story telling. It adds an extra degree of freedom for the author and can almost feel like the prestige of an illusion if all the threads come together well at the climax.
I just wonder how well the extra freedom has been utilised in this case.

Is the Kirby chapter a flashback though? Perhaps because it's a Kirby POC chapter but perhaps not because it is in roughly the correct place sequentially for the Harper narrative.
Also if we're going by 'show don't tell' as a principle then why not a cold open of this scene right at the front of the story? This approach is show AND tell.