Reddit reviews Artifacts Cycle I: A Magic: The Gathering Omnibus
We found 17 Reddit comments about Artifacts Cycle I: A Magic: The Gathering Omnibus. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
We found 17 Reddit comments about Artifacts Cycle I: A Magic: The Gathering Omnibus. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
It's been a while since I read the books but...
The Powerstones were a big part of the world. The Thran were a society that didn't have access to mana or magic. The powerstones were a mysterious source of energy that powered their society, and were quite strong. The powerstone spike which Yawgmoth used to lobotomize Dyfed was potent enough to incapacitate a pre-mending 'walker.
Yawgmoth did poison Glacian to get to Rebbec, but kept Glacian's consciousness alive in a powerstone. He later used this powerstone to open his gate to Phyrexia. When Rebbec realized Yagmoth's schemes, she was forced to destroy the powerstone which held her husband's mind, splitting it in two. Those two halves became the mightstone and the weakstone, the stones which Urza and Mishra used to war on each other, and which eventually became Urza's eyes when his spark ignited.
Everyone needs to read the Artifacts Cycle. Great fantasy on it's own, even knowing nothing about Magic.
http://www.amazon.com/Artifacts-Cycle-Magic-Gathering-Omnibus/dp/0786953055
The Thran is not available for kindle, unfortunately. It is however in the Artifacts cycle omnibus, which I highly recommend. It has the story of the thran and then the story of Urza Vs the Phyrexians.
http://www.amazon.com/Artifacts-Cycle-Magic-Gathering-Omnibus/dp/0786953055
http://www.amazon.com/Artifacts-Cycle-II-Gathering-Omnibus/dp/0786953063/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=15M4GBD41KKZJWQTVT90
I've read a bunch of them (read: over a dozen) and some of them are good, some are utter crap.
Most of the rest of the books are garbage and you should stay away from them. I keep having faith in Wizards but they always let me down with some crap books and bad writers.
The artifacts saga vol 1 (The Thran and the Brothers War) is around $13 used.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0786953055/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all
There are 2 books that are a great start to the book series artifact cycle 1 and artifact cycle 2. They are the first 5 books in the whole series. The first one is the Thran and the brothers war. The second one is Planswalker, time stream, and bloodlines. They are a good read if you can find them for cheap.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=4774046&postcount=52
This is order that I'm using to read the books. I'm also going to go with the crowd and say that The Brother's War is a very good book, and the best place to start. It was recently reprinted in the Artifacts Cycle I omnibus, but don't read the first book until much later.
First off, get the two Artificat books, it is a collection of the stories from Urza's Saga.
Book 1
Which covers the Thran who were 3000 years before Urza and the growing up of Urza until he becomes a planeswalker.
and
Book 2
Which covers Urza as he travels the multiverse, realizes the threat that the Phyrexians really are, and starts his defense against them on Dominaria.
Then, read the Ice Age trilogy by Jeff Grubb.
Ice Age Cycle
Which covers what happens during the Ice Age on dominaria while Urza is away on his exploration. There are a lot more stories out there, but these should really grab you into the awesomeness that the story used to be.
The Magic Artifacts Cycle 1 and Artifacts Cycle 2 are great, just skip the Thran novel in cycle 1 to read once you finish Brothers war and cycle 2. Brother War in cycle 1 is probably my favorite book.
Amazon has a kindle version of Brother's War for 5 USD. Same for all of the Artifacts Cycle books, all at 5 USD. The paper novels vary wildly in price. The Onimbus books probably the cheapest way, totaling ~100 USD (these versions also are not available as kindle books via Amazon).
On a quick note, this book is truly awful. The plot is a convoluted mess, the characters are shallow, flat, or completely unrealistic, and the language switches from 'overly verbose English major' to 'under medicated pre-teen'.
If you're looking for good Magic novels, go for the Artifacts cycle of books.
If you want something more recent, I would recommend the recent Planeswalker novels.
Hey man, browsing through top posts so sorry for replying 2 months afterwords, but this art is specifically for Magic the Gathering, which has an incredibly unique magic system, both the game and the lore of the myriad of planes it takes place in.
There are some books about this, I've read one called the Artifact Cycle I (which is actually 2 stories in 1 book) and I loved it. Also at the MtG website lots of articles about these planes get posted.
So if you just want to delve into all of this amazing magic, there you go, or it's a great place for inspiration if you are creating your own stuff.
Scars is much more dependent than most books because it's essentially a sequel. Do you care about Urza, the creator of Karn? Or how Mirrodin came to be? Because it's annoying but all of it is tied together. But if you just want the story, check out the MTGSalvation wiki for your lore. It will keep you busy for a while.
If you really want to read, track down a copy of the Brother's War. It's easily the best of the books.
Copying this from an earlier, similar post:
Here you go.
Of these, the following on available for e-book:
In addition to the Secretist books.
Prior to Alara, each set had a matching novel, so each set had a triology. They never sold well, so Wizards eventually condensed them into single books for each set, but also added in single books for the new generation planeswalkers (the ones we have now). The Secretist is a revival of the book series, since no book was published for Innistrad, but using a different format: one short novella for each set, which should all together add up to a whole novel, similar to the Alara-era books but with a more encompassing feel. They're using it as a test.
You can also find the Artifact Cycle collections in physical copies, which are very worth the read and extra cash.
The Zendikar, Scars, and Innistrad stories happened mostly via a now-
happenedabandoned-by-Wizards medium, webcomic. You can find the relevant stories here.http://www.amazon.com/Artifacts-Cycle-Magic-Gathering-Omnibus/dp/0786953055/ref=sr_1_sc_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1412578674&sr=8-3-spell&keywords=magic+the+gathering+Artefacts+book
These are by far my favorite books of Magic. The Brother's War is an amazing novel, and The Thran gives you the origin story of the Phyrexians and Yawgmoth, which later on develops into an important plot piece in other books.
Interestingly, I found that Phyrexia (Magic: The Gathering) has a decent example of Eugenics - especially when it goes too far (and how could you prevent it from going that far?). Book Here
That's the name of the original book. They compiled the earlier books into an omnibus. Which is this
Me again. they just re-released the best as a compliation: The Brother's War and The Thran as Artifact's Cycle 1.
Here it is on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Artifacts-Cycle-Magic-Gathering-Omnibus/dp/0786953055/ref=pd_sim_b_1
Other good places to start are the comics of the new planeswalkers:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/multiverse/planeswalkers.aspx?x=mtg/multiverse/webcomics/main
And if you want summaries of books and things, there's a blog that does chapter by chapter coverage daily:
www.mtgfiction.com
That's a good start. If you want a more comprehensive explanation/summary, there's the mtgsalvation wiki:
http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Category:Storylines