Great novelisation of the Magic the Gathering lore story surrounding the cardgame expansion of the same name, War of the Spark.

Ideally background information is definitely a bonus, but not required.

I think I'm heavily biased. But I didn't find it AS atrocious as others have made it out to be. Writing could be better, yeah, but overall, I like it.

The Liliana storyline is pretty good.
Rat is annoying, but somehow Teyo and rat are still very cute together.
Holy cow, Chandra x Nissa not working out was not handled well.
Bad guys were written fine.
Everything else? Meh.

First, [vague spoilers] this book drops a long-running canon (developing) relationship from the plot altogether, then brings it back up for a very poorly written chapter in which the characters inexplicably tell each other that it’s over, and makes it very clear that one of them is too autistic to date and the other was never really gay. There’s been a lot of finger pointing about who did this- all I know is 1) whoever did it, it’s garbage and 2) it was almost definitely a a Straight White Dude (or maybe a few).

Second, though, hey, the book isn’t good anyways. While the plotting was much stronger than the previous novel, thanks to not having to exactly match the plot of 250ish trading cards, the writing is somehow worse. With more non-action scenes (I’ll admit some of Weisman’s action sequences are pretty good), we get a lot of inner monologues and bad lines. “Aye, girl” is the funniest for sure, but man, did this get edited? My guess is not really, due to timeline constraints or something.

Just, don’t. I got this from the library because I was curious, but wish I hadn’t even done that somehow. I could have read basically anything else and been happier. I want there to be good MTG novels because I’m a huge nerd, but if the choice is these or nothing, I’ll take nothing.

The writing wasn't great, the story dragged on in parts and felt rushed in others and the characters seemed fairly flat to me (not to mention the complete 180 pulled on some characters' relationships which was not only done clumsily but in a fairly in insensitive manner).

I'm only giving this two stars because there is a part of me that likes any addition to Magic the Gathering lore on a very basic level. But overwhelmingly I feel disappointed and sad about this second part to the War of the Spark saga.

Yeah, this book is trash.

So instead of suffering through all of it I went and read a decidely different fanfic rewrite of the thing, which is a way better novel as a re-write of Forsaken. I would give that novel 4 out of 5 stars. No biphobia, no queerbaiting, interesting developments. Got hooked.

War of the Spark: Forsaken is frosting topped with frosting.

Some good parts, some rather disappointing parts, but entertaining overall I guess.

This book was less action packed than the first one. The first book followed the story laid out in the MTG card set, so it has somewhat of a better structure. This book is more of an 'inbetween' kind of story. It's about the aftermath of the first book, and the fight against Nicol Bolas. A part of the story has to do with the guilds.

It's quite slow, not much action, per se. We do get to know more about the characters. There's more of Rat, Taio, Kaia, and Lilliana, my favourite characters from the first book. The story leaves an open ending. I hope that means that there is a third book in the works, despite the unpopularity of the first two books.

Audiobook - I'm not a fan of female narrators, but I loved Lisa Flanagan. I hope to come across her again in the future.