First Book of Chronicles 11-29, Second Book of Chronicles 1-10

The thing that's striking right away about First Chronicles' approach to David is that it's lacking the heroic journey.  He jumps right into being the holy warrior king.  Samuel is referenced but apparently nowhere near as important, or perhaps his significance is merely implied, the way a slew of famous prophets are name-checked at the end of Second Kings.  It's funny, too, but David is described very specifically as actively working against Saul, going so far as to collaborate with the Philistines.  Shocking, to say the least!  It's also David who uses the ark as a totem of war.  This is literally a different version of the same story, although parallel in most ways, much like the gospels of the New Testament.  In fact, it becomes more and more clear that the Old and New Testaments are far more structurally similar than you might sometimes think.  This may have been far more obvious in times past, but now, when most Christians don't know the majority of the Old Testament, things like this can be so illuminating.  The Old Testament itself is full of echoes, so it's not surprising that the early Christians wanted the New Testament to be nearly exactly like it, even in the ways where it seems to outright contradict its predecessor.

David delivers a psalm which reads like a mission statement of faith, including the phrase, "let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice," which was later adapted into a modern hymn.  The name "Satan" is invoked, though not explicitly explained.  This is hardly the first time that sort of thing happens.  The Bible is heavy with implied knowledge, and it's always dangerous for later generations to just assume it can all be lifted directly and literally to their own time.

God actually rejects the doctrine of war as the basis for promulgating the future of Israel, even though so much of the Old Testament to this point has been filled with it.  It's the reason given here for why Solomon and not David will build the temple (although there's also God's argument that he was perfectly content not to have a permanent home, almost as if he were relenting to David's logic).  It's almost as if war was perceived as crucial to the story originally for the simple reason that a certain amount of chaos was considered necessary to establishing order, like our modern notion of revolution.

This account of David's era is far more sober, less crafted, more like a foundation or yes, a chronicle.  If you really want to read the Bible without religious preference, this would be a good place to start.  David is downright Arthurian here.

The succession of Solomon is depicted as plain and obvious in this account, which is another major deviation from what has been established previously.

David describes Solomon's role after him in much the way Jesus later conferred on his apostles the future of the Church.  Another parallel.

First Chronicles ends by referencing some works that are clearly not in the Bible: the Chronicles of Samuel (which I would assume are different from First and Second Samuel), the Chronicles of Nathan, and the Chronicles of Gad.  No Chronicles of Narnia, alas.

Second Chronicles begins with the rise of Solomon, and features its own marked deviations, too, starting with how Solomon is given the gift of wisdom from God.  Previously he was given a choice of three gifts, and because he chose wisely (literally), he got all three.  Here he outright asks for wisdom, and God still gives him everything anyway.

The temple is built in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah.  It's a name that evokes Tolkien' Middle Earth, which would not be surprising.  Like C.S. Lewis, Tolkien built his fantasy on the back of his Christian faith, though less blatantly.  George Lucas likely did the same, though still less obviously, using other sources of what would be considered more obvious inspiration, but the elements are all there anyway.

Here the ark's contents are known, unlike what appears in Second Kings to be a secret Josiah stumbles across in the ruins of the temple.  It's very possible that separate traditions, perhaps from among the separate tribes, were gradually brought together.  They would have been aware of each other (hence the constant references to Chronicles in Kings), drawing from the same stories, but originally and quite obviously not cohesive.  It takes very brave faith for contradictions like this to exist in your holiest text.  It also takes very brave faith to completely ignore this and assume you can believe all of it at face value.  Both approaches are not necessarily wrong nor are they necessarily right.  For the objective believer, these are records that speak to essential truths that must be carefully sifted from the bones of history.  It becomes far easier when there are competing traditions right in the Bible itself, actually.  Despite ignorance in the face of free knowledge, it means no one was really trying to hide this fact.  This is good.

Solomon actually makes a call for universal inclusion in the Jewish faith, another presaging of the later Christian tradition.  So much of the Old Testament is geared toward the purity of the Jewish line, which is why there are all those genealogies, but right there and with one of the most famous figures of the Bible, there's one of the greatest contradictions!

You can further tell how God was perceived at the time by the way he was depicted, as a divine being who demanded perfect fealty, and when it wasn't given was ready to administer punishments and bad times at the drop of a hat, interpretations on past events that would have been natural to a people justifying their own history and continued devotion to an apparently capricious subject of faith.  That he also claims steadfast love is another contradiction, though Solomon does have God promise to relent if people make apologies.

Like David, Solomon's further adventures are supposed to be able to be found in other books, of course not found in the Bible: in Nathan, perhaps the same earlier-referenced Chronicles of; the prophecy of Ahijah; and the visions of Iddo, and both of these also concern Solomon's successors.

It's funny, but not a hint of Solomon's own wrong-doing is referenced in Second Chronicles.  He appears to be fairly perfect.  It's those who follow him who are the fallible wretches who ruin the future of Israel, so that the phrase, "so Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day" may be uttered again, and explain how two great men are not enough to have finally settled the fate of the Jewish people even though they were for all intents and purposes the culmination of all previous Old Testament material, a fact that only seems to be emphasized in First and Second Chronicles.

Second Book of Kings 11-25, First Book of Chronicles 1-10

We pick right back up with the succession of unfortunate Jewish kings.  There's an incidental reference to God sending Israel a savior of some kind.  The dying Elisha performs an act out of later Arthurian legend, signaling a destination of some sort with an arrow through a window.  His bones are also the first recorded Judeo-Christian relics to serve as the catalyst for a miracle.

Jonah is referenced.  Nineveh, separately, is also referenced.

The temple is desecrated.  There is a consistency now in the fact that pagans built their altars on high ground.  Hebrews generally behaving badly, acting a lot like the ones who came out of Egypt, and even create themselves some molten calves.  Second Kings makes it a point to say that they're reverting to former ways.  Only Judah remains a bastion of the faith.

Babylon looms heavily.

The phrase "you are now relying on Egypt, that broken reed of a staff," making it clear where that nation now stands.  The Aramaic language is specifically referenced.

A lot of this makes me think that this is the period where the Jewish faith began to be reconciled into one tradition, and this is before we Josiah, much less First Chronicles, which I contend may have actually been written first, making both books of Kings another act of prequel, like Genesis and the books of Moses.  But we'll get to that.

Isaiah enters the picture!  He's extremely instrumental in leading a religious revival under Hezekiah.  He also introduces the doctrine of God having a plan rather than humanity goofing up, which supports my predestination theory from earlier, in that Adam and Eve were always meant to fall.  No matter how often humanity fails God, he's always leading them in a specific direction, starting with Abraham.  You might also say that some of this was shaped in a certain direction by later extrapolation of the historic record.

The angel of the Lord smites the Assyrians.

Hezekiah seems to tempt the Babylonians in much the way Egypt and the Philistines were previously induced to consider the spoils of the Hebrew faith.  Isaiah prophesies the exile.  Manasseh succeeds Hezekiah, is so bad that God swears holy vengeance against his people no matter what, and "no matter what" happens to mean Josiah, who enacts a greater religious revival than Hezekiah.  He reigns in Jerusalem for 31 years.  He discovers the book of the law, which is presumably the ark, and by this may have helped solidify Jewish faith to that point.  He is given an all but cursory appearance nonetheless.  He dies in battle at Megiddo, another reason to associate it with apocalypse.

Jeremiah is referenced!

Then, unfortunately, Nebuchadnezzar, the great king of the Babylonians.  He has already taken dominion over the Egyptians, but that only stands to reason at this point.  Jerusalem is besieged.  The Hebrews become, actually, amicable citizens of Babylon, not like the bondage in Egypt anyway.  Second Kings ends.

First Chronicles begins with a real chronicle, all right, a thick tangle of genealogy that does a more thorough job than any biblical precedent before it.  Caleb seems to be more significant in this record than Moses, who receives a cursory reference, but at least his descent from Levi is finally completed, unlike in Exodus.  This makes it seem like Moses was originally part of a separate tradition, and perhaps indeed he was.

Then the repeats begin.  The Philistines start our story here, and Saul's war against them and his suicide.  No real distinction is made about where he stands in the tradition except that he was, like most of the kings in the books of Kings, someone who didn't do right by God.