Life interfered yesterday and the day before (and will again tomorrow!), but today I edited through chapter 5. I also went back over some of the earlier chapters and compressing some of the more extraneous stuff so that we get to the A plot faster. I'm realizing that between the earlier and the current efforts to include backstory, I've got some repetition and overlap, so I'm cutting that as well as doing a general compression. As a result, right now chapter 5 is way tinier, but I'll fix that later (or I'll just have a short chapter--there's no real harm in that). Unlike in Trang, this book has narration from different characters' points of views, so I also am strengthening that--not everyone sounds like Philippe.
Now I'm going to read over the next few chapters--hopefully there will be less editing required, since we're into the story at this point.