THE REASON PEOPLE DON’T BELIEVE that I didn’t plan a trilogy from the start is that fantasy now suffers from endemic trilogitis (or the even more serious form of the disease, incurable seriesism). Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is largely responsible for this epidemic, since its six books were printed in three volumes, a trilogy. I expect Earthsea is also to blame, although it ended up as six volumes, too. . . . But when I started The Tombs of Atuan, I saw it, as well as I can recall, simply as a sequel.
