 Doubleday then asked McKiernan to rewrite his story, placing the characters in a different fictitious world, and also to write a prequel supporting it.The prequel, of necessity, resembles "The Lord of the Rings"; the decision of Doubleday to issue the work as a trilogy increased that resemblance; and some critics have seen McKiernan as simply imitating Tolkien's epic work.McKiernan has subsequently developed stories in the series that followed along a story line different from those that plausibly could have been taken by Tolkien.