Guest Post - Caught in the Middle by Matthew Ward
As you will have seen I’m enjoying Matthew Ward’s Legacy series a LOT and Matthew kindly agreed to provide a guest post for the blog as part of the blog tour. Ia sked about what second volumes really struck out and I think you’ll really enjoy Matthew’s selections and reasons
Second books – where would trilogies be without them? (Other than stuck as duologies, of course.) They occupy a curious space, and are too often seen as bridges between the necessities of ‘beginning’ and ‘end’. Truth is, a trilogy’s second book is more often the place where the gears really bite, and both setting and story ascend to new heights.
To celebrate the release of my own second-book-in-a-trilogy, Legacy of Steel, I’m going to talk a little (read: witter) about some of my favourite middle-trilogy books.
Expect a trip down memory lane and some spoilers for really quite old books.
Dark Force Rising (Thrawn Trilogy Book 2)
Timothy Zahn
Remember the Star Wars Expanded Universe? Lots of folk do, and fondly. Back in the 90s, Lucasfilm finally let other writers have a serious play in that galaxy far, far away, and the resulting mostly-canon material continued and grew all the way up to Disney’s acquisition of the franchise in 2012.
Timothy Zahn ended up with the dream job of telling the first real ‘official’ story post- Return of the Jedi, and did so with The Thrawn Trilogy (though at the time I seem to recall it was mostly referred to as the Heir to the Empire Trilogy, which was the name of the first book).
While the overall quality of the Star Wars Expanded Universe is incredibly uneven – as you might expect, given the juggernaut it became – The Thrawn Trilogy wowed readers back in the early nineties, and remains beloved today. And much like the movie trilogy for which it carries the baton, the second instalment, Dark Force Rising, is its strongest entry.
For those who don’t know, the story can roughly be summarised as follows. Thanks to the brilliant leadership of Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Empire is resurgent. If there’s to be any hope for the New Republic, our heroes must neutralise the cornerstones of Thrawn’s strategy: a shadowy cabal of noghri assassins, a renegade Jedi Master and his search for a lost fleet that will turn the tide.
Dark Force Rising showcases a lot of what makes a great second book. With the setting and protagonists (a mix of returning franchise staples and new creations) established in Heir to the Empire, Zahn’s free to prod and poke them into new situations, with moments of genuine growth that aren’t tied to the central narrative. Secondary characters gain new prominence, and the galaxy itself never feels larger.
The book also tells its own, individual story. Of the plot points I mentioned before, the lost Katana Fleet – one of the two titular ‘Dark Forces’ (guess what the other is?) – is established, expanded and resolved within the confines of this volume. Where the noghri and Jedi Master plots overlap the other volumes (though both see substantial forward motion here) Dark Force Rising is grounded in this race to the Katana Fleet … and not coincidentally has what is one of the best Star Wars finales in any medium.
Elfstones of Shannara (The Sword of Shannara Trilogy / The Original Shannara Trilogy)
Terry Brooks
Okay, I’ll freely admit that this one’s a bit of a cheat, as yon book wasn’t originally written as a trilogy’s second volume… but by the time I came to read it in the 90s, it was certainly branded and marketed as trilogy, so I’m counting it. My article, my rules.
Elfstones again leans heavily into what I consider hugely beneficial for a second book – its central story is established and wrapped up all within its own pages (unsurprising, given its not-a-trilogy origin). But even considered as a standalone part-of-a-series work, Elfstones breaks further away from The Sword of Shannara than you might otherwise expect.
Elfstones is an archetypal fantasy. Only the paired chosen ones Wil Ohmsford and Amberle Elessedil can save the world from the threat of Dagda Mor’s demons, by undertaking a quest through untamed wilds. While homages to The Lord of the Rings are still very much present, Elfstones is very much its own tale and breaks new ground for the world of Shannara.
While the long-suffering Ohmsford bloodline is again called upon to involve itself in weighty and perilous affairs by Allanon, the vast majority of the book is given over to new enemies (demons), locales (the elven capital of Arborlon and the Wilderun) and characters (most memorable of which is probably Stee Jans, leader of the Border Legion Free Corps).
If anything, Elfstones is a much more focused story than Sword (though I confess Wishsong is my favourite of the trilogy – broadly speaking I think these early Shannara books just get better and better). It’s not really a surprise that the TV adaptation of the franchise skipped straight over Sword in favour of Elfstones. If anything, the threat of the demons is much more apparent than that of the Warlock Lord in the first book. On top of that, Brooks retroactively embeds Elfstones as part of a trilogy by using it as a foundation for much of what follows.
Elfstones of Shannara might not have been meant as a middle book upon publication in 1982, but it holds the title proudly today.
Enemy of God (The Warlord Chronicles / The Warlord Trilogy)
Bernard Cornwell
Enemy of God is the second entry in Cornwell’s epic tale of King Arthur, variously known as The Warlord Chronicles or The Warlord Trilogy. (What is it about the trilogies on this list and not having a single, identifying name anyway? I blame marketing.)
It’s a little bit different, inasmuch as Enemy of God doesn’t have its own ‘core’ narrative – it’s really just another step in the ongoing story of Arthur ap Uther, Derfel Cadarn and their supporting cast. Or perhaps I should say ‘steps’? Cornwell’s goal with the trilogy is to retell as much of Arthurian myth as possible in as cohesive a way as he can. As a result, every book in the sequence is really an anthology of smaller stories woven into a larger narrative.
As a super-simple synopsis, Enemy of God is about the days of Arthur’s de facto rule of Dumnonia (southwest England) as Mordred’s protector and regent. In a break from tradition for the middle books of trilogies – which often reach bittersweet or downright bleak endings in order to build momentum for Book Three – Enemy of God is probably the most optimistic of the set. Under Arthur’s leadership, the Saxons are driven back, the kings of Britain are (mostly) united and the kingdom prospers … though never without (an often very personal) cost. It still ends badly, of course, because it’s tragedy.
(If The Winter King is ‘Everything’s Terrible, But Maybe Arthur Will Fix It’ and Excalibur is ‘Everything Starts Well, but the Dark Ages are Horrible and Fate is Inexorable’, then Enemy of God is ‘Enjoy This While it Lasts, it’s About to Get so Much Worse’.)
As a result, Enemy of God is much more tightly bound to its trilogy than the other books I’ve talked about. There are plenty of continuing plot threads, rivalries and outright conflicts continuing from The Winter King and a good many aren’t even wholly resolved at the end of Excalibur.
And yet you never feel cheated. Some of this is because there are so many individual stories playing out within Enemy of God (the quest for the Cauldron of Clyddno Eiddyn, Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere, the Saxon War, etc.) that you get plenty of resolution, even though not everything resolves. The rest is because this design makes the setting just feel more alive. The world is always bigger than the characters we’re following – we treasure the moments of peace and calm precisely because they’re so fleeting.
In many ways, Enemy of God is the polar opposite of Elfstones of Shannara. Where Elfstones stands alone, Enemy feels like it could be merged with the rest of the trilogy to make a single, uninterrupted volume. Proof that there’s not one, single path to success – and that’s a lesson worth learning.
