Chiff and Fipple Forums

Skip the prologue. It never matters.

I find it hard to skip the prologue. I always want to read it, especially if its a good piece of science fiction. But having said that I skipped the Prologues in David Eddings books. They really are irrelevant.

Depends on the book, surely?

I like to read the foreword, the introduction and the prologue, and the afterword and epilogue as well.
The introduction has always had something useful and helpful to say.

I expect S1m0n reads the epilogues. That seems unbalanced to me.

Innocent Bystander wrote: I expect S1m0n reads the epilogues. That seems unbalanced to me.

I'm reading a novel, not practicing feng shui.

Epilogues tend to tell you what has become of characters that - if the book was any good - by then you have come to care about.

Prologues are mostly just wanking. It's authorial self-indulgence. Rarely do they ever contain any important info you can't figure out by starting at chapter 1, and if they do the writer is incompetent. They're outside the narrative arc, and often contain characters and situations you'll never see again. Why bother? What's left for a prologue to accomplish? A vague sense of scene- and tone-setting, I suppose. But again, if the author has to step out of their narrative to do that, they're no good.

Epigraphs are mostly a waste of typography, too.

I suspect we may be reading very different books.