The Curse of the Sequel?

The idea of a sequel to a well-known book should, except in a very few cases, only come from the original author. In my years of reading I have come across only two stories which have been successfully expanded upon by someone else.

One was Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark who took the world and characters of John Wyndham’s original in a new direction whilst keeping the integrity of the creation intact. I came across the book in the main public library in Hong Kong and tracked down my own copy many years later having sent a message to the author on his website. What made this sequel work was the way in which he had allowed the characters to age and change subtly.

The other occasion on which this worked were the Barbara Havelocke books Estella’s Revenge and Estella’s Fury the second of which you can see reviewed at the link. The stories feature the beautiful but damaged character Estella Havisham from Great Expectations. In these sequels she takes her education in darkness and uses it to even the score for women in particular in a society where men treated them as objects and possessions not human beings. Plus ca change as they say! What makes Estella’s continuing journey work so well is the complete understanding that Havelocke has for the character combined with her willingness to push that character to extremes. Every action she takes is in character but we as readers don’t know exactly what action it will be until it happens because Estella is such a complex character. I have never cheered on a character performing evil acts in the same way!

Outside of these two I have read two books expanding on A Christmas Carol. The first, a prequel about Jacob Marley was just about readable but added nothing to the original and was instantly forgettable. The second, a sequel about Bob Cratchit, was an absolute abomination! The whole family had characters which were diametrically opposite to the Dickens novel and I gave up in disgust after 45 pages, annoyed at being dragged in by such an appalling piece of writing.

I had a similar reaction to a completely unnecessary sixth book in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series written after Douglas Adams’ death and containing characters with familiar names acting in ways that indicated that the names were all they shared. I got about 75 pages in before giving up on that one!

It is a very difficult task to write a sequel to someone else’s story and, I would think, it’s not that easy to write a good sequel to your own. Looking at my bookshelf I can see a few books which have successfully taken us on a journey with a character over a number of novels. They were all written by the original authors with the two exceptions I have mentioned, so we need to leave it to them.