# Fiction authors writing more novels based on same events from another character's perspective **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 17, 2018, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014 "2018-02-17T19:03:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Didactylos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a183cd/32.png) [@Didactylos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Didactylos)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2018, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014/41 "2018-02-18T13:32:42Z")
Len Deightons Spy Sinker revisits events from the first 5 Bernard Samson books, seen from the POV of his wife and colleagues. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014/42 "2018-02-19T04:30:37Z")
> [@moojja](#): > > Only one chapter really overlapped. Most of _The Vampire Lestat_ is about Lestat’s life before he met Louie, and and what happened to him afterwards. Armand’s story has been told three times: By Louis in Interview with the Vampire By Marius in Blood and Gold By Armand himself in The Vampire Armand. The next Anne Rice novel coming in October 2018, Blood Communion sounds like it is a re-telling of the events of the previous couple of books from Lestat’s POV. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014/43 "2018-02-19T12:07:39Z")
Although I read them many decades ago, ISTR Philip José Farmer’s _Riverworld_ series doing this. Each book is a new adventure, but some of the same characters/situations are described in multiple books, each time from someone else’s perspective. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014/44 "2018-02-19T13:05:49Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Robertson Davies’ [Deptford Trilogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deptford_Trilogy) and Susan Howatch’s [Starbridge series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Howatch#The_Starbridge_series) are examples of series of novels that are told from the viewpoints of different characters but that have some overlap in their settings, characters, and events. I love Robertson Davies and that trilogy. I have signed First Canadian editions of that trilogy (and his other two). My nomination for this thread: **An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears**. It is an Historical Fiction Murder Mystery/Thriller. It is set in Oxford England at the death of Oliver Cromwell and how his rule of the UK would be succeeded, and most characters and events actually happened. But relevant to this thread, it is written in four parts - in each subsquent section, a different narrator revels truths about the previous narrators that changes what they claimed, and adds more detail. Not Rashoman exactly, because it is not about a specific single event, but rather the unfolding of this complex Succession + fictional mystery over a period of time. Fun read! [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AFYOQP6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?\_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AFYOQP6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014/45 "2018-02-19T13:29:19Z")
The main thing that comes to mind for me is that both Twilight and the fanfic Fifty Shades have this going on with the guy. I wonder what it says about me that I remember it from authors I don’t like. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014/46 "2018-02-19T13:34:54Z")
> [@guestchaz](#): > > Piers Anthony’s Incarnations series was enjoyable when I was younger, but I tried reading some of it just recently and couldn’t. I think I’ve aged out of his target demographic. Anthony did the same thing in his **Xanth** series, which (a) I’d guess you’d like even less, but which (b) retold various events from the POV of that old wizard who could supposedly answer any question for anybody desperate enough to pledge one year’s service to the guy, who’d served as a plot device in the old books. The gag, of course, is that we now get to see him doubt whether he really deserves his reputation — and that he only pretended to have a mystical pact with the demon he’d made a big show of summoning — and that it’s not clear, to him, if he even _has_ a magic talent, since he’s been satisfying querents by having just kept good records of what he learned via curiosity and luck (which has let him go favor-for-a-favor to get yet _more_ stuff on tap, such that his whole operation almost runs itself). ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014/47 "2018-02-19T14:29:21Z")
If you want to count theater, Alan Ayckbourn’s _The Norman Conquests_ are a trilogy of plays (_Table Manners, Living Together_ and _Round and Round the Garden_) all showing events at the same characters over the same weekend. Characters will exit the scene in _Table Manners_ and go to the living room where they show up in _Living Together._ Ayckbourn later wrote _House and Garden_ which had two plays running simultaneously in different auditoriums. In both cases, incidents in one play is referred to in the others. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014/48 "2018-02-19T14:58:17Z")
Slightly stretching the “same author” criterion, _Juggler of Worlds_ (Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner) revisits several Known Space stories from a different POV. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014/49 "2018-02-19T15:27:17Z")
**The Other Waldo Pepper** , the book you’re referring to would be _Question Quest_, which was the only Xanth book past about the sixth or seventh one which didn’t completely suck. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014/50 "2018-02-19T16:03:18Z")
> [@digs](#): > > Just wanted to say “Thanks, all”! I’m rereading \*Ender’s Shadow, \*and I’m on the waiting list for the audiobook version of _Dragonsong_ (first book of McCaffrey’s retelling from a kid’s perspective). I have a ton of affection for both the main Pern books and the Harper Hall Trilogy (Dragonsong/singer/drums), and I wouldn’t have said they fit this thread at all. They’re set in the same universe, and occasionally in them people hear about the big events that happened in the “main” books, but they’re a fully contained set of side stories, not “a teenager is present at all the main events of Dragonflight and reacts to them”. That said, they’re well worth reading. (Note that some of the characters introduced in the Harper Hall Trilogy show up as minor characters in _The White Dragon_, the third of the main Pern books.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-authors-writing-more-novels-based-on-same-events-from-another-characters-perspective/809014.md?page=2)