Should a prequel be the new #1 of a series?

I believe in reading series in order more than ever now that I'm writing a trilogy. I'm on book three, and of course it needs to stand on its own--most writers try to make it so you don't have to read their books in order--but OMG for the love of all things holy, don't read mine out of order! ahem. Actually, that's not what this post is about.

This post is about prequels. Do you consider a prequel the new book #1 of a series? How about a movie?

Movies. Should a new watcher go prequel first?

There are now a whole lot of Star Wars movies out. Should a new viewer watch them in chronological story order, starting with prequels? Or is it still more fun to watch them in the order they came out, with the prequel adding dimension to the main story?

I was thinking about the Terminator movies here, too, trying to decide which technically goes first, until I remember mindf&%$ing myself years ago on that same subject. John Conner sends his friend back in time to protect his mother from Arnold Schwarzenegger, and then his friend and his mom sleep together and his friend becomes his father...then blood starts dripping out my ears. Terminator has no beginning!

But there is a definite chronological prequel to Star Trek--namely, the fabulous movie that came out last summer. It would be weird to watch that Star Trek movie before you watched the classic episodes. But that's more an eras thing. (sorry about the Chris Pine pic. It's from my Amanda guest post yesterday. I guess I'm too lazy to get a new one.)

The second Godfather movie went into the Godfather's childhood, and actually, my mother in law actually edited her own version (in the VHS days!) so that she had a Godfather saga in total chronological order, starting with young Vito Corleone on the rooftops. I think that's totally funny of her, but sort of cool. But how would that change a first-time viewer's experience of the story?

Why I was thinking about this in the first place.

I was wondering the other day if anybody read Men of the Otherworld before Bitten. These are two of my fave-ever books, both by Kelley Armstrong. Werewolves. So amazing.

Bitten came out in 2004 or something. It's sort of werewolf Elena's story, and Men trickled in as shorts on Armstrong's site before being compiled into a book in 2009. The shorts are all what happened way before Bitten. A lot of Men centers around Clay, who, I'll just say, is linked to Elena, and the stories about Clay really add a lot of richness to Bitten, but is it richness in hindsight? Would you get more good richness by reading Men first? Or is it best to read them in the order that Kelley Armstrong released them?

Bitten: the entrance of Clay

Sometimes a character's entrance is so powerful for me, and this wasn't an exception with Clay. One of the most enduring images in Bitten, for me, is that of Clay waiting by the gate when Elena arrives at Stonehaven (werewolf pack-leader Jeremy's mansion). When you read it, you don't even know who Clay is. He's this guy waiting for her.

In this passage, Elena's cab approaches the gates.

A figure sat on the grass, ankles crossed as he leaned against the stone wall. Clayton.

The driver squinted, trying to make out the house in the dark, as blind to the brass nameplate as to the man waiting by the gate. The moon had gone behind a cloud and the coach lamps at the end of the drive were unlit.

"I'll get out here," I said.

"Uh-uh. No can do, miss. It's not safe. There's something out there."

I thought he was referring to Clay. "Something" was an apt description.

Clay seems so menacing in this first view. I really, really didn't like him. Then, a paragraph or so later:

The driver's eyes went to the side window and he jumped in his seat. "Jesus!"

Clay had left his post at the gate and materialized at my window. He stood there, watching me, a slow grin lighting his eyes. He reached for the door handle. The driver put the car in gear.

"It's okay," I say with deep regret. "He's with me."

I remember so badly wanting her to get away from him! I trusted and liked Elena by this point in the book, and definitely did not like Clay. Anyway, Elena then gets out of the cab (before Clay can "make a scene") and starts walking up the lane to the house.

I didn't dare ask Clay what was going on. That would mean engaging him in conversation, which would imply that I wanted to talk to him. With Clay, even the simplest overtures were dangerous. As much as I wanted to know what was happening, I'd have to hear it from Jeremy.

What's interesting is that if you read Men of the Otherworld first, you get this whole saga of Clay as a feral, abandoned, but intelligent child werewolf, struggling in the wild, and later, through all kinds of pack and family trouble. A good-hearted underdog. You'd be on Clay's side.

But here in Bitten, when Elena treats Clay so harshly, if I'd read it after Men, I might be like, WTF does Elena have against Clay? I wonder if it would put me off of Elena, until I got their whole story. Or would it?

I'm rambling. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe when a writer builds a huge world of books, as Armstrong has, she loses a bit of control over how people experience it. You don't experience people chronologically, outside of family, usually. In fact, I think in life, people experience stories that aren't their own out of chronological order...you meet somebody, become friends, then learn about their history.

Anyway, prequels. What do you think?

When a prequel comes into being, covering the time before an established series, should that be book #1 to a new reader? Is it smart to read it first? Or not? Oh, and if you haven't read either of these two books? Oh, do! In whatever order.

WIN! You can win lots of nifty prizes, including a copy of Mind Games if you so choose, at Amanda's. Stop by and enter and wish her a happy b-day!
You can also win a copy of In and Out at Chris' place, Stumbling over Chaos!

Great moments: Men of the Otherworld

Great Moments from Last Night's Reading
Book: Men of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong

Page: 52

Spoiler level: low

Bitten by Kelley Armstrong was my first urban fantasy read, and it remains one of my faves. It came to me in a roundabout way some six or seven years ago; I was at a writer friend's home, about to take an 8-hour train ride later that day, and had nothing to read, so she pulled a hardcover off her shelf--a novel she'd been sent to review.

It had completely different cover art than it has now (pictured right). It looked and felt like a literary novel. At the time, urban fantasy wasn't really a category, I think, so maybe that's how it was being sold.

I'll never forget how she described it: "It's about yuppies who turn into werewolves at night." I thought that sounded weird and interesting--I imagined something like Fight Club, and I took the book. Looking back, I think she didn't really read it. But I did, and I was hooked! It had super hot sexy scenes, paranormal creatures, exciting struggles. Way more fun than the stuff I was used to!

Last night I was feeling a little slumpy in my reading; I probably picked up three different books, but no, no and no. And then I spied Kelley Armstrong's Men of the Otherworld anthology by my bed, which was one of my fave reads of last year, and a total must-read for fans of Bitten, Stolen and the rest. It's two novellas centering on Jeremy and Clay, and two shorts that relate to Jeremy's parentage. Anyway, I just had to revisit some of the Clay and Jeremy stuff from the novella entitled Savage.

Armstrong usually does female narrators, but she gives Clay such a great voice here. In the early sections we learn about how he ended up a feral werewolf, alone in the bayou, and how Jeremy found him and worked tirelessly to bring him back into the world of humans.

This is a tale of small victories, and I just so love it. The interactions between these two are engaging and realistic, and they add wonderful dimension to these characters. A favorite moment: after days and weeks of patiently feeding Clay in the wilderness and finally getting him to put on clothes, Jeremy gets Clay to follow him to a motel, but of course Clay gets spooked at the motel room door and runs away to sleep under some nearby bushes, then:

Later that night, I woke up shivering. Louisiana was suffering through a cold snap that winter and even the clothing the man had provided didn't help much, I remembered that burst of heat from the motel room.

For a long time, I lay there, shivering, fear warring with discomfort. Finally I leapt up and dashed for the motel. The door was still open. Inside,the man was asleep on the bed. I curled up in the doorway and went to sleep.

And so I let myself be domesticated. In the end, like any stray, I was conquered by the promise of continued food and shelter. Trust would take longer.

For at least a week I slept in the doorway, not letting him close the door no matter who cold the night got. One day, another man came by. While I hid in the bushes outside,the other man yelled at my man, motioning at the door. Money changed hands and the other man left. That was the first of many such exchanged I'd see in my life--cash buying tolerance for my idiosyncrasies.

After a few days, with the right amount of food for coaxing, the man convinced me to come inside the room. He left the door open, so this seemed safe.

Armstrong's sensibility about the animal side of werewolves is one of the things that has always stood out for me in her werewolf tales; I always say, this is somebody who must spend a lot of time watching dogs, thinking about dogs.

I also love the voice here: smart but spare. I don't get into novellas much, and I don't do a whole lot of rereading, but as usual, I break the rules when it comes to Kelley Armstrong: the Clay and Jeremy stuff is so satisfying!