Delayed Reaction Time

As discussed before, the author has a weird way of telling time in this story. He consciously slows down one side despite any evidence to the contrary, but then slows down events in general as well. The main reason for this seems to be the somewhat inefficient means the author has chosen to try and convey the great events and scope of this story. That method is to tell each chapter as a single month in time, then immediately move on to the next month. Not a horrible way of doing things, but it creates genuinely weird situations where military operations begin exactly on the first of a month or end exactly at the end of one, something that doesn't really happen in real life.

This fact also prevents any real attempt at describing things in depth as the author seems loathe to play catch up unless taking time to detail events in the past he feels relevant, which are more usually distractions from actually describing plot related events.

We also see that the author delays certain events for narrative convenience.

For instance look at the Battle of Berthierville. Despite Montreal falling at the start of May, with British forces on the St. Lawrence and reinforcements arriving and Grant's army not moving overland until July, with the fall of Kingston the entire front remains static until the end of September. Similarly Lee's great offensive against Washington takes place exactly on October 1st, much like the American invasion of Canada takes place on May 1st, and the British landings in Maine take place on June 1st.

This is a very obvious, and somewhat annoying pattern. Other than many of these dates the author doesn't provide many other dates and so we never get a very tight idea of when things are happening in this story, and are more often than not left guessing or filling in blanks.

So if you ever find yourself scratching your head over when something is happening or why there is a delay, you can thank the author for picking a very confusing narrative style.