primeideal

 

Okay, there are parts that I definitely like! Finn's backstory is great, so is Rose's, put 'em together, awesome. But as a part of the Star Wars series, it overall falls flat for me, and these feelings have only deepened with time.

 

Obviously, if you like the ST, that's great! You're still just as much a Star Wars fan as me and I don't want to dissuade you from enthusing about or creating fanworks about your favorite characters, etc. But there have been some fans I've run across who don't seem to get why I've in part bounced off these, and I've been turning over thoughts in my mind for a while about how to express this better, why do some parts of it work for me and not others. Knowing me, I can either do a one-sentence summary, or a bunch of wall-of-text posts, there is no other way. So we're stuck with the latter.

 

This (tag: sequelitis) is going to be an ongoing series posted...whenever I feel like...about what makes sequels/prequels etc work/not work for me. Take as subjective, yada yada. But I had to get it out there. Spoilers all over the place, for obvious reasons. Sometimes I'll try to be vague but sometimes that's not gonna work.

 

What makes a good sequel? For me, it has to build on the original. If there are shared characters (and there usually are, but that's not guaranteed), the recurring characters should be recognizable as "themselves at a later date"--maybe they don't have the exact same outlook on life, but there should be strong similarities between them.

 

The sequel also has to have a plot that takes the events of the original into account. If the original conflict was resolved and everyone's just sitting around chilling and flirting with absolutely no complications, that might be a fine fanfic, but it doesn't really work as a standalone work. However, and this is going to be a big sticking point for me, the plot also has to recognize the events of the original, or at least not negate them!

 

A lot of episodic series don't really live up to this, because they're mostly designed to be read/watched in any order. So for something like Animorphs, there are occasional time dependencies with the minor characters, but for stretches like books 14-19, you could switch them around in almost any order and be fine. Similarly, I really enjoyed the Redwall books, but they're pretty formulaic in a "a villainous army rises to threaten the Abbey; they are defeated" way. Especially by the end, they don't have much dependence on each other/characters. (The first few might actually be better as prequels, which I might get to in a later installment...maybe.)

 

So what are some sequels I've liked?

 

 

At the end of the original Blade Runner (set in 2019), Rick Deckard and Rachael escape together. The focus of 2049 is on a new character, officer K. However, we later learn that Rick is alive and on the run from the law. He's succeeded in his goal of getting out of LA and the system and won't be drafted into being a Blade Runner again. The accomplishment of the original is intact.

 

But there's still conflict. K has a mystery to solve at work, with lots of pressure from Joshi, Luv, and later Freysa's gang. And as we see, the events of 2019 were very important in setting this mystery in motion.

 

I think it's also well done that the sequel doesn't take sides on whether Rick is a replicant. The different versions of the original have different implications, but all we get from 2049 is the conversation between Gaff and K that can deliberately be read either way.

 

I have some issues with this series, but for the purposes of sequel analysis, this is a good one. In the first book of the trilogy, City of Stairs, Shara Komayd is the main character and Turyin Mulaghesh is a supporting character. In "Blades," Mulaghesh takes center stage.

 

The worldbuilding of these books centers around two countries, one of which has gods that have been killed off over the years, the other doesn't. In "Stairs," we found that two of the gods were only sort of dead, and Shara had to kill them off fully. In "Blades," we focus on a different god, Voortya, who was really "dead" decades before the events of Stairs. So Shara's accomplishments are still intact, but the characters have to puzzle out "well if Voortya's gone, how is she influencing the living world."

 

Shara has changed in the intervening time; instead of being a semi-disgraced spy, she's now risen to prominence and become a reformist politician. Mulaghesh lost one of her arms in the end of Blades, and is mostly adjusted to using a prosthesis. And we learn more about Sigrud's past as a (mostly absent) family man. So the characters are different, but still recognizably themselves. Additionally, as we learn later on, one of the climactic events of "Stairs" set one of the main villains of "Blades" down the path to darkness.

 

 

Tiny fandom, but it's been on my mind since I wrote for it for "Be the First," so: "Children of the Star" (book 1) ends with Noren trying to accept his new role and the fallout of being a heretic. In Mountains, which picks up less than a year later, he's still not committed to all the implications of his position. But he has to serve as a mentor and friend to Brek, the Technician who becomes a heretic and finds himself in a similar place to Noren. Brek wasn't named in the first book, and he wasn't on trial yet, just "a questioning Technician who helps Noren out"--but his experiences with and watching Noren push him over the edge to outright heresy. Meanwhile, the Scholars are starting work on a new settlement, which requires them to go against long-established tradition and leave the City to work elsewhere.

Are there issues, sure. I mentioned in my other post on them that this one can get kind of anvil-y in a "science and faith, they are both good!!" kind of way. But I don't think that stems from being a sequel.

 

Ultimately, the main characters are saved from being stranded in the wilderness by stumbling across an alien artifact and activating it to send out a signal. Is this a deus ex machina? Not necessarily--"Children" had already established that there were other sentient Visitors to the planet (who stripped the metal), so for me, that felt like a believable resolution. (I know Engdahl has gone back and forth on whether the twists of book 3 are plausible, but to me, there's enough groundwork laid in 1 and 2 that "and now, aliens" isn't too jarring.)

 

So, sequels! They can be done. Well. Sometimes.