From Villain to Hero

It's very difficult to take the villain of previous books and make a hero out of him or her. It can be done with success, but it takes writing savvy. It can't happen suddenly, as so often attempted. The change must come gradually to be believable, and even then, readers don't usually like it. I've had plenty of secondary characters become the main characters in subsequent books, but I've never used a villain in this way.

Two books I've read recently attempted this and fell short in my opinion. They are both good books, otherwise, but the characters were just too despicable in the first books for me to accept them as a hero and heroine in later books in the series. One of the big problems was that the book where they became the hero started with them suddenly being kindhearted and caring when the previous books had ended with them being horrible. One tried to give a brief explanation in one paragraph, but it didn't work. The other had the change of heart with no explanation at all.

I've read many books where the main character was very flawed and made poor choices at the first of the book and then changed. This is not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to books that have vile characters causing problems for the main character(s) with no change of heart, and the author expects the reader to suddenly accept them as good-hearted, main characters. This rarely works.

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