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One of the difficulties of restarting a story last seen twenty years ago is that for readers who read the original books when they came out–even five or six years later–it feels as if there should be more time between Oath of Gold and Oath of Fealty than there is. Intellectually, these readers may grasp that the second Oath picks up where the first one left off, but they’ve experienced years in between and they aren’t the same readers they were when they finished the first three books.
I was reminded again of this situation when someone commented that we hadn’t seen anything of Achrya since she showed up at the Halveric steading in Oath of Gold. In other words, in book time, less than six months by the end of Oath of Fealty…not that long a time for even a minor deity to spend plotting another campaign. But to a reader who’d read the Paks books years earlier, it feels longer. No amount of clue-placement by the writer can undo the effect of real life time passing.
Another element is that the new books cover less time per volume than the older ones. That’s for several reasons–but the biggest bar to getting through the calendar faster is multiple viewpoints. The more main viewpoints you have in a story, and the more “separate” the POV characters are (in space, in events), the more wordage you need to establish the POV characters as main characters. What’s happening to them isn’t the same all the time.
For these books, it was either have multiple viewpoints or have multiple volumes each with one main viewpoint, as Lawrence Durrell did in The Alexandria Quartet, in which the same time period was from different POVs in three volumes, and then the final volume moved on and combined things. And that’s because the long story arc involved the three main characters as joint protagonists, affecting each other and the story arc in almost equal amount. I went with multiple viewpoints in each book to keep from going over the same time repeatedly. Like all choices, it had consequences.
It’s taken me almost three volumes to cover one year. Admittedly, it’s a year in which a lot has happened in everyone’s life…someone is in the frying pan or the fire all the time, and sometimes that’s more than one in the same stretch of time. This is the source of that mistake I’ve spoken of before, that the events in Luap’s book where Kieri and Paks are involved happen at the wrong time. If I’d known then what I found out two years ago…that mistake would not have happened, but it did.
I suspect that new readers–those who are only now getting involved in the Paksworld stories–will have less temporal discontinuity problems–they may find it jarring to be in someone else’s head, but the temporal gap in book time will feel like the real gap to them.
Meanwhile, Book IV is now over 55,000 words, about a third of its final length (though not yet a third of its likely first-draft length.) That’s guessing, of course. It might be more or less.
Comment by Genko — February 12, 2011 @ 3:23 pm
Yes, it helped me a lot just to go back and re-read Deed, and I’d guess I’ve re-read the whole thing at least twice (along with the maybe 6 or so reads of Oath) in the last year.
The other thing that’s different is that you’re also a different writer than you were before. Your prose is tighter, there’s more action (admittedly, as you say, it’s a tempestuous time when a lot is happening), and you are more interested in people of maturity as opposed to coming-of-age. So there’s a bit of a different “feel” to the writing of this story.
The multiple POVs is part of this, maybe — a recognition that events are not linear, nor do they only affect a finite number of lives. So a widening of view.
Comment by Gerd — February 12, 2011 @ 4:22 pm
Possibly your editor or agent say differently, but every serious reader should reread the previous books after so many years. I usually reread at least the last book of a series before I touch the new one. Kind of helps while eagerly waiting for the release date too.
So I wouldn’t worry about that time gap too much.
The multiple POVs gave Oath a different feel than the nearly-one POV of the Deed though. But I like both ones.
Comment by elizabeth — February 12, 2011 @ 4:48 pm
Yeah, the time thing affects writers as well as readers, and I’m definitely in a different place as a person and a writer. It’s not just what ages interest me, but what ages I have the perspective to handle in the context of a particular setting.
Multiple POVs are one of those technical things that some writers use and some writers despise. Same with readers–some love ’em, and some hate ’em. When I did the Planet Pirates books with Anne McCaffrey–especially Generation Warriors–I was forced to deal with the technical requirements, and found that I enjoyed it (after the first panicky days.) Naturally I then went hog-wild with them in the Serrano-Suiza books (especially 4 and 5) and learned my own limits in the process. (Can I handle 12 viewpoints scattered across a galaxy? Yes, but I shouldn’t.) Ideally, every book teaches a writer at least a few things–something about herself/himself, and also something technical about the craft of writing.
Comment by elizabeth — February 12, 2011 @ 4:49 pm
Thanks, Gerd. I’m not worried about the time gap–just mentioning it as one of the factors in continuing a series after a long gap, something a writer has to take into account.
Comment by Xanify — February 13, 2011 @ 10:57 pm
I suspect that new readers–those who are only now getting involved in the Paksworld stories–will have less temporal discontinuity problems–they may find it jarring to be in someone else’s head, but the temporal gap in book time will feel like the real gap to them.
If it helps, this has been true for me – I picked up the Paks trilogy two-odd years ago and have had no problems believing that the start of Oath of Fealty overlaps with the start of Oath of Gold.
Comment by tuppeny — February 14, 2011 @ 2:14 pm
Juat looked at Amazon which describes Kings as ‘the languorous sequel’ To Oath of Fealty. (!)
I don’t think that I would describe any of your books as languorous.
Comment by Daniel Glover — February 14, 2011 @ 8:00 pm
tuppeny,
I hope they mean it in the in terms of the 2nd or 3rd definition (Penguin Pocket from eons ago when I spent a year in the U.K.) “2) a feeling or mood of wistfulness or dreaminess 3) heavy or soporific stillness”
I’m actually kind of intrigued that they might think this. But, as been discussed in this blog, Kings never really took on the life of a “middle” book, were events are taking place, whereas a second book of five is more about “building” so whether the feel is “dreamy” or “still” leads to different directions but the action is probably on a lesser level than either OoF or CoV.
I’ve got my copy ordered so I’ll just have to wait to find out.
Comment by elizabeth — February 14, 2011 @ 8:10 pm
I suspect the reviewer read only the first chapter, which is psychological rather than physical action. Because later…well, you’ll see. Lives are put in danger. Stuff definitely happens.
Comment by elizabeth — February 14, 2011 @ 8:41 pm
The middle book is the book with the “turn”…it’s not just a matter of how much action there is. At the end of the hinge book, whichever volume that is, the reader should have a pretty solid idea of where the whole group is going, what the major problems are, and an increasingly clear view of the goal (but not whether it will be achieved, or how.) The other five-book group I’ve done is Vatta’s War–structurally similar, but of course a different genre. Still, Marque & Reprisal, book two of that group, is very much an action story–and still introducing major characters and sources of conflict. Engaging the Enemy is the hinge book of that group, in which the direction changes–the turn happens–and the main characters settle into the course that carries them through the next two volumes to the end.
Kings has action aplenty. Though the first chapter doesn’t have much physical action in the first chapter, in terms of slam-bang-fights & chases stuff, that chapter has at least four very important hooks or keys that will remain active through the book and on into the next and the second chapter has several more. The Paksworld books, in general, have more layers of causality than the SF books, so there are more gears to show, as it were. In addition, the influence of elves–by their very nature of being immortal and conflict-averse–gives the humans involved a sense of wading through thick syrup. Time behaves differently.
I’ll be interested in the reactions of the rest of you. Though I’ll be deeper in Book Four by then.
Comment by tuppeny — February 14, 2011 @ 10:12 pm
The write up was their blurb – alas, not a review!
Comment by elizabeth — February 14, 2011 @ 11:59 pm
Sounds like they may have used the PW review, then, because it also used “languorous” and that’s not a word you’d expect to find in independent blurbs/reviews.
Comment by Richard — February 15, 2011 @ 9:07 am
Trying to spot “the” turn in Deed I’m reminded more of a baseball run, with end of book 1 as 1st base, the botched healing at Fin Panir after Kolobia as 2nd – the hinge if you like – and the revelations at Chaya about the sword as 3rd. Only then did I have a pretty solid idea where the whole group was going.
As for Achrya, wouldn’t this have been a good time for her to have started something surreptitious somewhere else where nobody is watching: western Fintha maybe? I like the ragged edges that leave plenty to our imagination: please don’t sew them all up too neatly.
Comment by elizabeth — February 15, 2011 @ 9:16 am
Not to worry: I don’t have time to sew up all the ragged edges neatly…or room, either. Editors are not fond of neatening that doesn’t advance the plot.
Of course, there are readers who want every dangling thread brought up and “finished” in the story’s fabric, as well as those who like the sense that things go on somewhere else (and the reader can wander around in the undefined.)
Comment by Greg Gagnon — March 30, 2011 @ 3:23 pm
We have a saying “Timing is everything. And positioning is everything else.” It can easily be reversed as well. I ran across Oath in an airport, not knowing it had come out. I read it mostly on the plane, then went back and reread the rest of the series for the Nth time. It stands as one of my favorite series. I read Kings today and am now anxiously awaiting more, while sharing the others with friends.
Comment by elizabeth — March 30, 2011 @ 10:15 pm
Positioning definitely counts! What luck for me that you found it in that airport!
Comment by Antoine — June 14, 2011 @ 2:49 pm
Out of your original post, one thing I don’t get and it is the reference to “that the events in Luap’s book where Kieri and Paks are involved happen at the wrong time”.
Do you mean Liar’s Oath or the events in Luap’s Stronghold in Paks 2, or something which is yet to come?
Comment by Antoine — June 15, 2011 @ 3:46 am
never mind, my copy of “Legacy of Honour” came today and the answer was quite clear, all at once. 🙂