Aaaaand it’s Monday again with a fresh start. As ever, it’s time for a Fantasy with Friends post; all the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is on the discourse about prologues:

There has been ongoing discussion on social media about whether readers actually read or enjoy prologues. Do you think prologues add value to a story, or do you wish the story just started with chapter one? Are there good and bad ways for an author to utilize a prologue in a fantasy novel?

There are good and bad ways to do just about anything when it comes to writing a book. Good ways might include setting the scene, providing some ancient history that proves important to the story, introducing characters who become important later, etc. It can be a good way to tantalise the reader, but it can also feel like a bait-and-switch if you swap straight to other characters right after the prologue and it isn’t clear at all how things will connect (or whether they ever will).

I definitely do read prologues, because they should be there for a good reason and be part of the story. If they aren’t, that’s definitely a problem! But usually they are, and skipping them seems like shooting yourself in the foot by omitting part of the information the author intended for readers to have — I don’t really understand the decision to skip them, honestly, and I especially feel like rolling my eyes when people who skip the prologue then complain things don’t make sense.

There are definitely times when it feels like it could’ve just been a part of chapter one, or that it’s unnecessary… but that’s an individual book being not that great, not a sign that prologues in general are pointless.

Monday’s back again, but look, here’s one I made earlier! I’m on a trip right now to celebrate my birthday (today is indie bookshop spree day!) so comments might be slow, but I’ve got a Fantasy with Friends post anyway. All the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is on dark academia in fantasy:

Do you enjoy dark academia fantasy novels? What are some themes you enjoy seeing discussed in dark academia (ex. ethics in academia, corruption, classism, etc?) Do you think the genre does a good job exploring such themes in general, or are many books focused mainly on the aesthetics?

I don’t think I’ve read a lot of dark academia, not enough to really form an opinion on it as a genre. I’m not opposed to the idea, it’s just not the way my interests have taken me. I think the best of it grows out of and reflects the real dark sides of academia, where people are pitted against each other for limited funding or limited numbers of places, and privilege can get you a long way. Thinking about e.g. R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis, which I’m in the middle of, it feels like a lot of it is a response to those pressures and the sometimes unfair situation gifted people are placed in, struggling against each other for limited opportunities when the opportunities are a bit of a poisoned chalice anyway.

It is not my experience of academia, to be clear; I’m an enthusiastic and serial student, with a BA, MA, BSc and MSc now… but having to get into departmental politics is definitely one reason why I haven’t done a higher degree (the other major one being that I prefer to synthesise over doing something new, and synthesis is not rewarded in academia — despite being essential to scientific and medical consensus).

Another aspect of dark academia is the importance of acknowledgement that academia has done some very dark things indeed. I studied at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a school founded in order to train doctors for colonial service. The whole point was to keep white enslavers healthy for the sake of Empire. It was engaged in “decolonisation” initiatives by the time I enrolled, and continues to be, but that fundamental attitude ripples through the whole course of study. We were taught (in 2020-2025) about the importance of keeping African people healthy so they can study and later earn more… and yes, that is going to benefit them in the sense of helping them get jobs and make informed choices around drug treatments, but there’s also a high degree of “capitalism is the one and only answer, and we must help them do it properly because they won’t if we don’t intervene”.

This blog isn’t a good place to delve into the ethics and complications of all that, but the point is that LSHTM isn’t alone, and many academic institutions are mired in that kind of history, and a history of extracting knowledge without credit and without benefit to the peoples and areas studied. I don’t think I’ve read anything yet that really engages with that, though I think one or two of the books on my TBR do (like Kuang’s Babel).

Anyway, I think what I’m interested in when I do read dark academia is a bit of awareness of the tensions there and how they can particularly impact minorities, and/or of the dark history of many academic institutions. I prefer the “darkness” to mean something rather than rely on vibes to provide a background to an “enemies-to-lovers” story or something. Not that I’m against an enemies-to-lovers story, but I’d like the “dark” part of the academia to make sense and drive the plot, rather than just be an aesthetic.