Dramatic, although as expected. Also lol @ Liliana's Beefslab. For all the total drama queens Planeswalkers can be, this was an ok introduction to the characters. If you already play Mt:G, you're really not actually missing much if you skip the book.

My main gripes are mostly from a writing standpoint: I wanted more Rat (she had more character development than any of the main characters....), and wow, ok, really pushing Gideon as a mythic here. The problem I have is that the 'rarity of the card' is...not relevant in the novelization. We get plenty of scenes that show how powerful Gideon is already.

Aside from that, it was an ok novel.
Seriously, though, most of that was expected. Not nearly as many deaths as the card set led me to believe. Looking forward to the email chapters. ( )

If you took the last 45 minutes of Avengers: Endgame and made it into a book substituting characters from the Magic the Gathering universe, you would have this book. Seeing as this was my first Magic the Gathering novel (other than a short story), it was kind of like watching that last part of Endgame without seeing the other movies. There were a million characters, all from past novels, and many of them had a history with each other.

I read this because I'm running a D&D campaign in the Ravnica setting so I thought it would help me add flavor. Not sure it really did that. It wasn't horrible, but really it just felt like one long battle scene. It did make me curious about some of the other characters though, so I may be reading more MTG novels in the future. ( )

I liked this book. it was fun and engaging, it brought the characters to life and made me want to play more magic, but that's probably the entire point.

that being said, what's with the reviews on here full of spoilers but not tagged as such? that really sucks, goodreads. I knew a major character death was coming before it happened, but I was still so into it that I still cried.

so yes, only 4 stars. I didnt love it enough to want to come back and pick it up again. my one major complaint is that there were lots of planeswalkers. I mean LOTS. too many different viewpoints who essentially all sounded the same. while the snark works really well for characters like Chandra and Ral, it doesnt work so much for Jace and Gideon. I really just wanted to read an entire novel about Ral and Tomik, but that's another story. ( )