Some Thoughts on Prologues…
Prologues… To read, or not to read? It’s a recurring debate in reader circles on social media, one that crops up every few months to plague my feeds.
To preface this post, my stance on prologues is this: If the author includes it in the book, I’ll read it. The same is true for epilogues, but that’s an entirely different subject.
Not all readers think as I do. Some have very strong opinions about whether prologues should ever be included in a book, and I honestly don’t understand why it’s such a hot topic. Sometimes, it rivals the pineapple on pizza debate in terms of ridiculous intensity, and I’m left blinking at my screen wondering why this matters so much to people.
If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know that I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction, the two genres where prologues seem to be the most common. I’ve read some really outstanding ones over the years, but I’ve come across some less-than-stellar ones too. It’s the nature of art (and yes, writing a book is a form of art.) Not every reader is going to like every aspect of a book, but the strangely heated debates that rage on social media are still baffling to me (as is the pizza debate.)
Anyway, I wanted to highlight a couple really creative prologues I’ve encountered and why I liked them. These aren’t the usual “preview of the end of the book” or “this happened 1000 years ago” sorts of prologues. No, these are, in my reading experience, completely unique.
Here are 3 books with amazing prologues that break the usual mold:
Daggerspell by Katherine Kerr
I read this book (and most of the ensuing series) in the late ‘90s, but the way it all began still sticks with me to this day. The prologue speaks of the moment of conception, from the would-be embryo’s viewpoint, and it isn’t until later that the full implication of that prologue is clear.
Past lives are a fixture in the Deverry series, but there was something special about this particular person and that specific lifetime. It’s rare that a prologue remains embedded in my memory after so many years, which means I had to include it on this post.
A Lion’s Pride by P.L. Stuart
I believe every book in The Drowned Kingdom Saga by P.L. Stuart has a prologue, but the one from the 4th installment really stood out to me. The character featured in the prologue isn’t named until the final page (14 pages in), though there are hints to his identity from the start. And when the reveal happens, it was jaw-dropping.
Of course, you have to read the first 3 books to fully understand what this prologue implies, but it was incredibly well done.
Dark Theory by Wick Welker
I have to share an image of this prologue as seen from my Kindle, because just describing it here won’t do it justice.
Yes, that’s binary code. No, I don’t know how to read binary. So why am I listing this prologue here, when it seems rather pointless?
Because not knowing something included in a book bugs me to no end. I found a binary-to-text translator online and decoded what the prologue says. It reads:
you are beetro
find galiaro you are beetro
find galiaro you are beetro
find galiaro you are beetro
find galiaro you are beetr…
I started reading this book on my lunch break at work, but wasn’t able to decode it until after I got home that day. By then, I’d read the first 3 chapters and the prologue made sense. Beetro is a robot and one of the main characters.
I know some people will probably ask, “Why bother with it at all?” My answer is simple: I was curious and I wanted to know what it said, if anything. I was pleasantly surprised to learn it did, in fact, mean something.
What other interesting prologues have you encountered in your reading life, and what makes them so special? I’d love to hear your thoughts.