You Only Get One First Time – First Book equals Best Book?
Is the first book of a series the best book, or is it something else that that book has going?
It’s a question that’s been on my mind a lot, now that I’m nearing the end of the (looong) path to releasing The High Road, and giving my full attention to its followup. (That and, how I keep putting off the sequel to my other book, Shadowed, even though that idea’s been with me more than ten years longer.)
It happens so much. Again and again, I think we’ve all found that the story that launches a series has the purest sense of the hero finding herself… and the only “true” villain or opposition that does her justice… and all the related conflicts and relationships and revelations in what feels like their purest form.
Take Game of Thrones, the original novel. Yes, the “game” is playing on such a small, bloodless field compared to the craziness that’s coming. But there’s just something about watching that court work its way toward all hell breaking loose and still hoping someone there will turn things around; once GRR Martin proved all bets were off, the story felt wilder, deeper… but not the same.
Or Dragonflight. No matter how many books Anne McCaffrey set in Pern, there’s nothing like the sheer power of learning about her dragonriders (a brand new flavor of awesomesauce at the time, don’t forget) through the unstoppable young Lessa plus their whole world having to rediscover how much they need their dragons.
Call it a courtship, in a way. The best opening stories have some of the same intensity of meeting a person we have to keep around—everything’s new and obviously right, and most of what we discover is just finding even more layers of compatibilty. And it all builds to a joyous finale and and a happy honeymoon.
–Then again, it’s wouldn’t be much of a marriage if the fun really peaked there, would it? We expect a real keeper to go from obviously fascinating to whole new kinds of rightness the more we get to know them. Shouldn’t the author who’s reached me with one book be able to build that relationship better each time after that? For every unmatchable Dragonflight there’s a Hunger Games series with a Catching Fire that takes its original concept to a whole new level.
(And sometimes fizzles it all away on a book after that. Katniss was a lot more interesting around people that forced her to fight, not when they held her back and she let them.)
We’ve all heard the Hollywood mantra: a sequel should “do the same thing, only different.” By those lights, a better second book is nearly impossible—recreating the clean joy of the first while still mixing it up and getting just the right balance? But it does happen.
In fact, I think many of those “best first” books may not be the best to read, just the best ones to remember. They’re the ones with that easy-to-appreciate story arc, the one that starts with a relatable hero or an epic but easily-understandable situation, and moves on to grand victories or other changes the hero creates. Which means everything after that has to start from the less elemental conditions he’s already built, and probably has that as a constant reminder that the protagonist can win and grow when he needs to. Even if the later story’s more enjoyable, it’s hard to look back at it years later and dream of starting reading over on the plains of Rohan, when it would be easier to settle in with just a hobbit watching a birthday party and never knowing the Nine Riders are on the roads.
The first story is more approachable, not always more fun. Movies and TV can make it even clearer, with all the pressure the studio is under to build on a first film or season, when it doesn’t misfire. The first year of Buffy is unforgettable teenage adventure, but it’s the second that’s just unforgettable. Or the first Star Wars is still arguably the most purely fun thing ever filmed… but it took the twists in Empire Strikes Back to keep it from wearing out its welcome.
Hmm. I’ve got some Freefall to write…
