I can't wait.īefore I start my review, I want to say that I have very little experience with the Magic the Gathering card game. Upon finishing this book I wanted to immediately to jump in to the 'Invasion' cycle because the Phyrexians are so crazy and powerful. M:TG fans will certainly love the history provided but the story is still so well written and an amazing tale that even people who do not know who Yawgmoth is will still like the book. Very interesting book and I recommend it for Magic: The Gathering fans and those who have never played the game. It then jumps back and explains the build up to this war - which by the end will leave you wondering what just happened and how the magic universe was drastically affected thousands of years before Urza rocked the world in the Brother's War.

In fact, there is no knowledge of magic in 'the Thran.' This book starts with the knowledge of a Thran-Phyrexian War. This book takes place before Urza and Mishra, and even before there were colors of magic. It has a lot of background information on some important characters in the magic universe. I will definely read his Artifact Cycle book 3 now. Also, I guess I had expected Serra to be more powerful than it was depicted.īut King has made me interested in the story again. I thought it was incoherent, rambling and raises more questions than it answers. I sort of lost interest after the second book in Artifact Cycles. For example, who was Gix? Why were there nine planes in Phyrexia? How did the practice of meshing body parts to form new Phyrexians come about? What roles did the Meekstone and Mightstone play? What happened in the war between Thran and Phyrexians? This book clearly explained all the mysteries in the earlier books and made the whole Magic story more interesting and convincing. Mysteries in the earlier books were explained here. It also blended very well with earlier stories like the Brother's Wars. This book charts how Yawgmoth from a medical doctor slowly became a demon and how Phyrexia came into being.

We all know Yawgmoth was a demon and Phyrexia was a terrible place. This was clearly the best Magic The Gathering book I have ever read.

The Thran by J. Robert King