Can you change your world once you've built it?

The answer has to be yes, but carefully, so very carefully. It's definitely a problem that rears its head during a lengthy series. I'm thinking the black brotherhood series, by Ward, or the Anita Blake series.

We should all have to deal with the problems of a ridiculously bestselling series, but I sort of understand the complications that would come with writing many books that all still read as unique.

To that end, Suzanne Collins ending the Hunger Games trilogy after three books was a really wise decision and one that probably had her publisher crying.

Because a world has to evolve to keep each book in a series different and interesting. But how do you evolve it in a way that keeps it consistent but changing and in a way that satisfies your readers.

I felt betrayed by the Anita Blake series when she made that strong, independant heroine, to my mind, a sex crazed weeping woman. I might be exagerrating, but the books became about the heroine's change into one of the creatures she used to hunt, and how she tried to keep her humanity, a really interesting preminse, but I didn't like the way she did it. It was an evolution I couldn't follow, but I understand why she had to do it.

I see the same potential problem with the Brotherhood series. What new is there to learn about the world? how does she evolve it in a satisfying way? I'm interested to learn about how she does it.

And at the same time, Ward is smart enough to start another, really interesting series.

Because sometimes the only way to deal with the problem is to end the series in a really satisfying way.

Have a very merry Christmas everyone.