>>24469203
Prologues are the poor man's way to pass the famous hurdle of hooking up the reader in the first sentence, then the first paragraph, then the first page. You're basically admitting that your story's beginning is not interesting enough so you write an entire chapter that cherrypick your best ideas to meekly promise your readers that you have a plan, except they already assume that you do, so you just come off as insecure. And what do you say you do that for? To set up your main threats, you say? To introduce concepts? I'm 99% sure you're going to have to explain all of that again later on anyway, so you're just going to repeat yourself.

I have never read a prologue that was worth reading, even on books I liked enough to reread, all they do at best is make me feel nostalgic for a time I didn't know about the things that were being talked about, and at worst they spoil my surprise again by jolting my memory and making me remember the twists early on.

If you must, must, must have a chapter that chronologically takes place before the start of the plot, either respect your readers' intelligence, call it "chapter 1" and move on with confidence they will understand the nature of what they're reading, or respect your readers' time and make it one page long and so intentionally obtuse they instantly figure out they're not supposed to understand what you're talking about yet.