Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Read this book now, Jun 29 2004
I am a casual player of the Magic: the Gathering card game but I find the books, especially this one in particular to be extremely good books. This one in fact stands taller than the rest.Enter the strangest brother-brother relationship based on their birthdays and break them apart in a cannot forgive each other fight. Each being equally brilliant and equally capable of building machines or artifacts to increase the technological capacities of their two very different cultures, which also are at war with each other. I found the plot to be very interesting, and it already made ties back to "the Thran" and this book will be referenced in every M:TG book until the end of time probably. The story is told mainly through the eyes of Kayla bin Kroog, Urza's wife, who coincedintally plays a roll in both of the brothers lives. Seriously, I find it very hard to deny a book about a war between brilliant brothers, especially with cutting edge technology, unless it is written by a very poor author. I have read quite a few of Jeff Grubb's books and he has yet to dissappoint me, and I would be surprised if he ever did. Read this book if you are a fan of the card game and even if you have never heard of the card game. I have always been facinated by brotherhood, and this book goes deep into that theme.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Good Genre Fiction, April 28 2004
Jeff Grubb proved himself a competent author with his work in the Dungeons & Dragons worlds for TSR. When Wizards of the Coast acquired TSR they made a good choice in picking Grubb for the first "Magic" author. He translated a very mathematical and orderly card game into a compelling story. It must not have been easy to essentially draft a back story to a game that had already been popular for four years at the time this was written. Above and beyond meeting fanboy(girl) expectations, the end product is actually a decent genre book in its ownright. I recommend it highly.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
The Brother's War....a fight to stay awake?, Mar 17 2004
I'm what most consider to be a newbie to Magic: The Gathering. I've been playing since October of 2003. In the time between than and now, I've been looking at the past sets of Magic; Specificly the 'Antiquities' and "Urza Block" sets. This encompases 4 releases of card sets, each filled with great cards...but that isn't the point. The point is, I bought 'The Brothers' War', 'Planeswalker', and 'Time Streams' because they tell the story of the most interesting sets of the best Card game on the market. 'The Brothers' War' was, to say the least, very disappointing. It's 35 chapters long, 33 of which are, for lack of a better word, mind-numbing. I fought to read this book through to the end. There are high points here and there, but overall it isn't worth the drudge to the end. The author paints a great layout of areas, but has a great lack of real character discription. There is little action until the last part of the book, and the large part of story revolves around the brothers struggling with lack of materials...very drab. I will concede that the epilouge ties the stroy together very well, though. Rather than buying this product, go for books II or III of the Artifacts Cycle...much, much better.
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