In which Val Con speaks to his heir.
It’s a prologue. Not much to say about it, really. It reintroduces the key points for new readers, and for returning readers who don’t happen to have just finished reading the preceding novels.
One thing about doing it in a scene like this, instead of just doing a Story So Far narration straight to the audience, is that it also introduces a few characters, not just in the sense of telling the reader that they exist and what their names are, but also by showing what they’re like as people and how they interact with each other.
i really enjoyed this prologue. The authors thought of a way to do an infodump that not only introduces some new characters but also has one of the main protagonists discuss the current situation and his part in it in a way that would have been out of character for him in any other scene.