Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
I love them!
My caveat, of course, is that I have mostly found them in high fantasy novels which is a genre I rarely if ever read these days. This means that I can’t really recommend recent stories that do this well as I am not familiar with the cream of the crop anymore.
Of the times I have read prologues or epilogues, I remember them feeling quite appropriate for the tone of their texts whether they was playful, serious, or read like a history textbook. (See also: J.R.R. Tolkien at times).
It would be interesting to see them used more often in other genres in lieu of writing sequels. Sometimes I finish a book and wish I could have just one more chapter about what the characters did after that final scene.
An entirely new novel about them would be too much, but a few to a dozen pages would be the perfect goodbye.
This could also be a way to soften that trend of dropping the reader straight into an action scene without telling us anything about the characters and plot in advance. Now don’t get me wrong. Sometimes that’s a great way to start things off, but it can also be a little to quite confusing if the conflict is a complex one or if you have five different characters whose names all start with the letter C or something.
A prologue could help ease reader’s confusion in cases such as that one.
That’s how I feel, Lydia, about seeing the characters after the events of the story. I think that’s a great use of an epilogue. A little flash forward is sometimes nice.
Cool!
I love them in novels if they are done well. Interesting that you see them more in high fantasy than in other genres. I don’t tend to see them in mysteries, but I guess I never thought of that before.
Thank you for sharing!