Fantasy Book Club discussion

Okay, so this is only my first day reading the book, but I felt it was worth throwing this to the group.

As a general rule, I'm not a fan of prologues. In this book, I really did not care for it. While one might argue that it sets the scene for the story by introducing the nature of these monsters Adoulla hunts, I just felt it was a bit much. The scene amounted to little more than shock value for me, and that is a pity. I like the main character thus far (although I've only read through the first two chapters), and I felt the first chapter would have worked just fine as the starting point for the book.

Perhaps I'm jumping the gun here since I haven't read the whole book, but I felt like this made for a good discussion point by itself and one that can be argued prior to finishing the entire book.

So I want to see what others thought about this. While I don't think this will kill my potential to enjoy this book, it definitely did not start things on a good note for me.

Well, I have to agree with you Bill. I thought it was hokey and stupid. Doesn't bode well for the rest of the book. I guess we'll see.

Although I'm really enjoying the book, I too felt like I didn't get much from the prologue. I guess we'll have to see if it ends up being important later on. Maybe the thing feeding off of the guard's fear is the thing creating all the ghuls? At least I think there was something feeding off the fear of a trapped guard, I had to read it a couple times to figure out what was happening, but I may just have not been paying enough attention.

After finishing part 1 and seeing there's another prologue to part 2, I definitely see the connection to the story, and think whatever's in the box is contributing to the guhls, but still feel the writing in these parts is much lower quality.

Read on. The prologue most certainly ties neatly into the latter half of the book.

It certainly ties into the rest of the book, but I'm not sure I felt it was necessary. I thought the three little prologues felt like a short horror story that weren't really needed for the plot.

I generally like prologues, for example, I think the prologues and epilogues in A Song of Ice and Fire are very well done. They usually sort of present a different angle on one of the story threads that is present in the rest of the book, and often tie books in the series together.

I didn't particularly like this one. It's tone was different from the rest of the book--that alone is not really a criticism, I think that's common for prologues. But it was different in a sort of in your face, brutal, depressing way. There are lots of good books that focus on in-your-face, depressing, brutality, but that's just not the strength of Throne of the Crescent Moon. For that reason, I think the prologue sort of sticks out. Sure, it sets up high stakes for the heroes, if the lose, something really, really bad wins. But, I think this prologue sort of diverges too much from what the rest of the book so that the venn diagram of people who love the prologue and people who love the rest of the book is two circles that do not overlap very much.

I wasn't bothered by the prologue. I found it interesting and it got my attention. I'm over half-way through the book and there are hints that it will factor into the story.

I was about to quit reading the book because of the prologue. I find it too gruesome as a start. I just don't like brutal tales.