Finally finished
Shattered Chains yesterday -- I just read a lot slower nowadays because I'm old.
The books are only 300 pages of relatively large font small paperbacks, after all.
Quality of this third book in the original
Magic: the Gathering series remains up to par, although I noticed the author, Clayton Emery, dialed waaaaaaayyyy back on the interesting alt-English terms and turns of phrasing this time. Too bad, I thought that gave the previous book some nice extra flavor. The reduction isn't really a negative, just less of a positive, though.
As I noted upthread, I was surprised at how quickly and how strongly CE brought back and integrated the plot of Book 1 (
Arena, which is really its own story). By the end of this book, though, I felt like maybe this had been mandated by Wizards of the Coast (the property owners) or maybe HarperCollins (the publishers), because while a certain character thus factors strongly here in Book 3, the character (trying to avoid spoilers) spends most of the book quite divorced from the plot of Book 1. Still, any continuity building is appreciated.
The grim-greyness (as I coined the term) of the series so far has also dropped back a touch, although that may just be a random flux. Still a high casualty rate in the hero team along the way!
The concept of the new story (this book being actually the second in an ongoing trilogy, with Book 1 effectively being an independent prequel) continues to lend itself well to small-unit tactics and strategy management, as the main characters chew on how to make their new little "army" work most efficiently. This warms the cockles of my little groggy heart.
As a fan of the card game, I was pleased to see the new first expansion (at the time of the book's release) being integrated into the storyline in a fashion that wasn't janky: the first action scene out of the gate (and these books start off running so far) features an enemy wizard who comes from a background where she uses Arabian Nights spells! I'm pretty sure the all-important next expansion set, "Antiquities", got repeatedly referenced yet along the way, too, with the author working in more references to the Brothers' War, Phyrexia (the Hell for Artifacts) and its denizens, and those who tried to oppose both dangers.
I wasn't entirely a fan of how the only way the protagonist team has even the slightest chance of accomplishing their goals, involves them having stumbled (in the previous book) into a hunt for the Most Powerful Artifact Ever Which Just So Happens To Have Been Built To Do What They Want To Do Although No One Knows That Until This Book.
That just seems like too much of a convenient plot gift, which no amount of handwaving generalities about "the gods" or "fate" can make seem more plausible since there is literally nothing in the books so far to suggest that there's a "fate", or any "gods" that would care about setting this up to happen -- much the contrary, actually, because the "gods" of the milieu (so far) are just elevated wizards who can now travel between planes!
I did however appreciate that this (quite literal) Plot Device doesn't end up working as well as the protags were hoping, and the final chapters of the book reveal that if anything their use of it will be directly backfiring on them! The author also brings out some of the ethical problems in using the thing at all.
Anyway, my low entry expectations for enjoying the series, continue to be strongly exceeded. Onward to Book 4,
The Final Sacrifice, which will end the current trilogy (and maybe any semblance of a 'series' for the rest of these first books).
I instantly checked Book 4's back cover, first thing, and was greatly amused that it continues to feature the same two cards bearing on the plot of Book 1 (we'll see if they finally loop back around to that book's plot specifically in the city of Estark) -- and also that the card for the Sewers of Estark, previously known on the first two back covers as "Sewers of Cityname"
, continues to just not have the title of the card printed on it at all anymore!
