This is the genre that can never let a story go. Scan the shelves of the section-and this isn’t even the special section most major bookstores devote to series such as Star Trek/Star Wars and Bionicle-and half of the titles will have subtitles like “Book 9 in the Shards of Treacle series.”

Shards of Treacle is good, particularly in this country where just about nobody knows precisely what treacle is like. Along those lines, I could envision a medical horror series called Panels of Death, a martial fantasy line referred to by its setting in Stemwinder’s Redoubt, and macho thrillers following the missions of the special-ops team Cadre Dropsy Azure.