I have the say, the jump in prose from FM1 (which even improves throughout that novel) into FM2 is pretty large. For all the frustrations I have with FM2 (and the reviews mentioning sophomore slump) it's a whole level above what I managed in the debut.
Probably because I didn't immediately go into writing FM2, like you would guess from the release dates (six months after FM1). FM1 was done far before it's release date in that stage of my career were I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to go the digital publishing route or try to get myself a traditional publishing contract ("you have to remove all the 'fucktards'." Never!!!). And there was actually a half dozen chapters of a Betrothal sequel and three or four??? other standalone novels I started and shelved (Gush is one, which I will finish one day I SWEAR TO GOD!!! Also Sky-Island, a novel about a very violent treeman called Leafed For Dead and what you would basically label an Isekai nowadays called Where Dreamers Go To Die). And, uh...there might have been a 500 page Star Wars fan fiction I wrote in the summer of 2010 which I've erased from the Internet.
I think all that experimentation, even if many were "failures", shows. Not that FM2 didn't have its own complications. It was originally meant to be much longer, with an added plot involving a Coyote warehouse that King Henry destroyed and for the school plotline I imagined the students managing to leave the Asylum grounds, finding a ShopsMart and King Henry stealing breakfast and cigs (this was snuck into FM4 during the road trip). In the end, I just kind of accepted that it was a bridge novel with the sole purpose of introducing King Henry's classmates and the Coyotes/Vega and settled for the shorter novel where KH "failed" but as an adult showed character growth and was able to gain from making peace with his brother-in-law.
One of the surprises that I added to the novel was Meteyos. This seems crazy now, but Meteyos and the Geo-Realm weren't supposed to be introduced until FM6. One lesson I've learned from writing the King Henry Tapes: everything will come faster than you ever expected it to. Or...Richard Raley just doesn't have any patience...
AND FM2 has the best chapter one hook of any of the books in the series. It's a banger. Seriously, anyone read "Jordan Josephine Price...found her at last" and put the book down? Or did you groan in pain when you saw the next chapter was in the school timeline and realized you were in for an all-nighter?
Great moments in FM2 include: KH learning about Meta-Yoyo (and not just because of fan-boy, "Ohhh! Dragons!" but because of all the other threads it sets up.) T-Bone. Because any story with middle-class, 300 lb., neurotic Tyson in it is better. And, because my sister is only two years older than me, the whole interaction with JoJo hit me in the feels. When we were small, we tried to kill each other (or so it seemed), and now we are the only close family either of us has left.
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