spacegnome said:
Oops, he's right, you know. I should have transthreaded the post before answering it. (and wouldn't that have been amusing to find? I was unobservant; perhaps I should move the entire conversation now and…no, it's not doing anybody any harm.
But Lackey's later series (particularly the owl books) do feel like an expansion pack, as do most of the Pern books after the white dragon. (and only the Last herald mage and the gryphon books are separated by centuries; the winds and storm are essentially continuous, with most of the characters carrying ove, albeit in lesser rôles, and a few extras added.
But the problem raised is very real, and I suspect the answer to sequilitis (where the readers and public demand more of the same, and you end up painting in the details or spending half the book explaining things to readers who haven't read earlier volumes) is to conceive of the entire work as a totality before the first volume goes on to gain the popularity that makes writing the sequels essential.
Not that fantasy has a monopoly on the technique; to name (and, I hope, shame) a couple of SF examples, the Rama and Ringworld sequels – um. Perhaps I'd better leave the subject. But note that Niven did many worthwhile stories in his 'known space' universe; it was only when he started 'explaining' his earlier works that for me it fell apart.
