Customer Comments ~ The Problem with Sequels

One of our regular customers is an avid reader of fantasy fiction and this morning, eyes gleaming with pleasure, she came in clutching the latest book in Robin Hobb's The Rain Wild Chronicles, City of Dragons.  I thought she would secret herself away in one of our little alcoves and loose herself along the banks of the Rain Wild River for an hour or so and therefore, in anticipation, readied our eternal coffee pot. But then I noticed that beneath the joy of expectation there was also an air of apprehension, so, I got out an extra coffee cup, joined her and asked her what was wrong.

There are many problems with sequels, not the least the concern that the new volume will fail to live up to those which have gone before.  There has been much speculation in the press in the last couple of weeks as to whether or not Hilary Mantel will have been able to 'do it again' with her follow-up to Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies.  However, this wasn't what was troubling our customer.  No, she was worried that given all she had read between volume two of Hobb's trilogy and this, the third in the sequence, she wouldn't be able to remember who everyone was and what the plot line had been so far.  Should she have re-read the other two before picking this one up from the library?

We know this lady well enough to be aware that she was perfectly capable of doing this.  After a very long hiatus in one particular series she re-read all eight of the preceding books in preparation for the publication of number nine.  Fortunately, ten to fifteen came out in fairly close order!  And, many of our younger visitors habitually re-read the existing Harry Potter books every time a new one was announced. One mathematically minded young lady even used to work out how many chapters there were already available and then begin her re-read so that she read a chapter a day finishing just in time to pick up the new volume on publication morning.  However, think what this means in lost reading time.  Think of those eight missed books.

I don't actually have the problem with re-reading that some of our customers do.  We have several regulars who would never dream of picking up a book for a second time.  They know how it ends, what more could they possibly get out of it?  Well, I think there are some books that do benefit from a second, and sometimes even a third, read, but each to his own point of view.  However, re-reading because you can't remember what happened is another matter entirely.  Isn't it actually the author's responsibility to make sure that there is enough information in the first couple of chapters of the new book to nudge your memory in the right direction?  In fact, as I recall, it was one of the markers of J K Rowling's development as a writer that she got very much more skilful at doing precisely that as the series progressed.  The opening of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was clunky to say the least.

The trouble is this customer has now got me worried.  I'm eagerly awaiting my own copy of Bring Up the Bodies but it is, after all, now three years since I read Wolf Hall.  Perhaps I should dust down my copy and start all over again. But then what should I do when the third volume appears?  We do have one customer who flatly refuses to start a sequence of novels until they are all published.  Where my favourite writers are concerned I don't think I have that level of control but it is certainly one answer to the problem.