The prologue for the first book of The Agartes Epilogues starts rather abruptly:
It is not recorded how Agartes knew that it was his son’s head inside the box.
–Jaeth’s Eye
It goes on to describe the aftermath of the massacre of Agartes Allaicras’ family some hundred or so years before the starts of the novel.
As I’ve probably mentioned once or twice (or many, many times), I went through a lot of drafts of Jaeth’s Eye before I was able to complete the version in 2012 that went on to get published in 2014. I knew the story pretty well, by that point, but I approached each draft a different way.
The first version of this novel was written in 2004 and begins with the first chapter as a prologue: Oji’s death, which starts the sequence of events involving the three main characters.
But the concept of this entire series is how minor characters can be weaved into a major plot, and one of the ways it does this is by interweaving common themes together: namely, that of love, family, duty, and purpose. Many of the interactions in the novels draw parallels to these themes, whether they be done by minor characters, major characters, or heroes of old.
I chose to show the aftermath of this massacre straight on in the final version of The Agartes Epilogues. While I maintained a formal language to try to create a barrier between the reader and the naturally-distressing events that follow (notice I didn’t do this with the other two prologues, because tragic as those were, too, they weren’t as painful), there is no hiding that it shows a man attempting to be calm while encountering the bodies of his wife and children. It was not an easy scene to write, and I still don’t really like reading it.
I know I’ve had readers who felt the same way. I believe that this is a significant barrier for many readers to overcome, and I think has resulted in many readers walking away from the series before they’ve even started. The percentage of people who read or comment about the novels is very low compared to the people I know who’ve purchased/acquired it, and I think that this prologue may well have something to do with it.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve shot myself in the foot–in terms of acquiring readers–by choosing this current version over the previous ones. But the artist in me won over, and I knew that this series–when viewed as a whole–can only achieve the impact I was hoping for like this. The prologues are all supposed to draw a bigger picture, creating mirrors to the personal plotline happening throughout the series, and it all comes together in the end. They’re not meant to be gratuitous or shocking. In fact, the series is supposed to be a contrast to the current grimdark trend happening in epic fantasies right now–it remains realistic and gritty, but it is supposed to be hopeful, too. The dark in the heroic, the heroic in the human nature, etc.
That said, explanations aside, a writer can never really predict how a reader can react to her work. She can only keep on working.
