Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
But some or many prequels are meant to be and are best read later, not at all in internal story chronological order.
|
And then there's
Patriot Games, which completely and entirely the first book in the series (not a prequel) and yet was published after
The Hunt for Red October.
Clancy needed to explain why Jack Ryan ended up where he was in
Red October and couldn't come up with anything. So, he paused writing the book and wrote a detailed outline (that essentially only lacked dialog) of what eventually became
Patriot Games.
This resulted in Ryan being treated with great respect by the crew of the HMS
Invincible with no detailed explanation as to why that should be. Simply put, it was because
Red October was a sequel, and you needed to read the other book first to know the details.
Clancy did it again in
Without Remorse. After you read it, you realize why John Clark treated Jack Ryan the way he did in previously published books in the series. Clancy had the backstory (with Clark and Ryan's father meeting when Ryan was young) written and planned out long before
Without Remorse was published, and it shows.
Despite all this, you can read the prequels in either publication or "world cronology" order and they work fine.
For an example where a prequel really has to be consumed in publication order, the movie
Captain Marvel is the perfect example. Without knowing character details about Fury and Coulson that are revealed in later chronological works, the movie falls flat.