Changing main character within a trilogy, is a good idea?
I am writing the first novel which will be part of a trilogy. For plot reasons, I am considering to change the main character in the other two parts (will be the same in the last two books).
But I don't know if it would be a good idea to change the main character in the trilogy, so I don't know if keep the same protagonist in all the books, or do what I have planned.
What do you think that would be the best?
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Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee sort of did this with the Rama series. The first novel reads startlingly like a history book from the future and focuses on the military and government people who find a spaceship which has reached Earth. Books 2, 3, and 4 are more traditional narratives around human and non-human families and other characters.
Anne McCaffrey did something more like what you're thinking in her Harper Hall trilogy. Dragonsong and Dragonsinger are about Menolly, a girl who is abused by her father for her musical ability until she escapes to Harper Hall to become a professional musician, while the third book, Dragondrums, focuses on Piemur, a different apprentice in the same Hall. Piemur is a secondary character in Menolly's books, while she barely shows up in his. Both are tertiary characters in other books in the overall Dragonriders of Pern series.
As long as you establish some manner of continuity between the stories — in the Dragonrider books the characters overlap; in the Rama series it's about the same ship and species — I think you're okay.
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If you've ever read Darren Shan's Demonata series you'd know that switching characters can work effectively, as he uses three different main characters who meet up at the end. So there is definitely grounds for a character switch, it's just about how you go about performing said switch.
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George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" kills off many important characters as the story progresses, and characters you might have thought were the main protagonist or the "hero" are frequently dead by the end of the book. This works because there are lots of characters and so there are at least a few established ones to carry the plot forward in the subsequent volumes. However, readers who are really invested in your main character may find that his or her death is too much for the story to bear, and not bother reading the subsequent volumes.
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