A friendly reader recently commented that this month’s chapter – “Argument, or, The Raising of the Elect” – could easily function as the book’s opening chapter, despite being the fifth in the release order. We absolutely agree! It is easy to imagine the story beginning right here with Arden Clarkson as our young hero, allowing the reader to discover the world and our central characters through his naive eyes. There’s a reason for that! In structuring the story, each of the first five chapters are intended to introduce one of our protagonists and to slowly layer on the exposition required for the plot to function. Each of these characters has a very specific point of view on the events of the story and, in that sense, any one of the first five chapters could be picked up and read as the first chapter of the book.
No spoilers, but the events at the conclusion of chapter 5 make it abundantly clear that we have reached the end of the beginning. A threshold has been crossed. There’s no turning back now…
