Other thing being that you don't have to recap absolutely everything in the IC recap/prologue. Consider - your target audience here isn't new readers all that much... they really ought to be reading One Hundred Days from the start anyway. "Forcing" isn't a question here, as far as new readers go. One Hundred Days is *good*, and it's not a huge amount to ask that they read the stories in order. You just need enough to jog the memories of people who read the story long ago. You need enough that stuff in the sequel basically makes sense, but you don't need to explain everything, and there are some bits of background that can be explained in the moment (for example, if you want to bring up Lee's issues with alcohol, that's the sort of thing that fits in very easily to either a conversation between Lee and some other character, or a conversation between two other characters as the go to talk with Lee). Of course, I don't know what you're planning with this story (and thus, what the necessary recap really is). It's possible that you've done this filtering already.
On the gripping hand, if this is helping you stretch your writing muscles, so that you're more in the groove of things when you actually sit down to write, that's all to the good.
On the gripping hand, if this is helping you stretch your writing muscles, so that you're more in the groove of things when you actually sit down to write, that's all to the good.