This is a prequel to the author's Lords of Rainbow which I shall never read because this effort completely turned me off. The language was way-the-hell too florid and rambling and I had no idea what this was about, much less what the succeeding story will be about, because after reading a third of this very short 'prologue' I was clueless as where it was going or what point it was trying to make. Worse, I had by then lost all interest in finding out. This is why I do not read prologues. They're utterly worthless, as is this.