The Thran (Magic: The Gathering: The Thran)

This is - so far, at least - one of the few MTG books I've read where I'm pretty much completely unfamiliar with the characters. The Cursed Land was so-so leaning towards bad and the Secrets of Magic anthology was hit and miss. But this - THIS! - this was awesome.The Thran is set in ancient Dominaria. It tells the story of Yawgmoth, an exiled healer mocked and feared for his theories about 'little beasties' that cause disease and reliance on nonmagical healing techniques, who is grudgingly invited back to the city of Halcyon to care for Glacian, the city's most valuable powerstone engineer who is suffering from an incurable wasting illness, and Rebbec, Glacian's wife and a politically powerful powerstone architect (she is the one who pushed for Yawgmoth's healing techniques to be tried as a last ditch effort over the objections of the City Council and Glacian himself). The story is segregated into four main parts - called The City, The Nation, The World, and The Multiverse - each of which (aside from the very last) has a first chapter that tells of a battle against Yawgmoth as a tyrant that is going on currently, and the rest of which tells the story of how Yawgmoth manipulated and bullied his way into that position of power. The main plot is a slow burn political intrigue as Yawgmoth manipulates the populace into believing he's saved them from an inherent poison, does away with dissenters by forcing them into quarantine, accumulates a corps of healers who become a trained fighting force, eventually demands the formal submission of the cities where he is already the de facto king. While this is happening on Dominaria, a planeswalker - originally come to speak with Glacian, a potential walker - also gets caught up in the web of honeyed lies and gifts Yawgmoth with an artificially created plane. When the plane bonds to him, he effectively becomes a god so long as he is on it and uses that power to "fix" all the things "wrong" with sentient races with the intent of making them strong and resilient and primarily perfectly obedient. Above all, Yawgmoth seeks power and a way to spread his power. The sections of the text encompass his takeover of first Halcyon, then the Thran nation, then the civil war as he tries to assert control over Dominaria as a whole, and his ultimately failed bid but still fervent desire to become a planeswalker to the multiverse could potentially be in his grasp.Just in terms of storytelling, divorced from the context of the Magic: The Gathering game, The Thran is amazing. The story doesn't reference any other material (probably because it was meant to be a prequel to other stories), so a reader can come to the book not knowing anything about MTG - the setting, the characters, the rules of the universe; nothing - and still understand what's going on. The plot is riveting and well paced, with a good mix of realistic and fantasy elements. The characters themselves - particularly Yawgmoth, Glacian, and Rebbec - are well fleshed out, with clearly defined characterization and behavior that makes sense in the context of that characterization. They come across on the page as people, which is always a hallmark of truly excellent writing. I was sort of worried going into the book that it would just be another so-so book that I needed background knowledge to know what was happening (as with the War of the Spark duology) or have characters I just couldn't connect with because I hadn't seen them in the game before (as with The Cursed Land) or suffer from terrible authorship (as with the War of the Spark or Test of Metal). Happily, The Thran is none of these things. It achieves the most basic goal of a fiction novel - to entertain - in spades.However, The Thran is not just a standalone book; it is part of a long set of lore for the Magic: The Gathering card game meant to tell the stories of their planes and their characters. On this front, I'd say it also achieves the goal. The characters are representative of their respective colors of mana - black for Yawgmoth, blue for Glacian, white for Rebbec - and their characterization fits well into what would be expected of mages for those colors. Yawgmoth is defined by an all-consuming quest for power, culminating in a (failed, thankfully) attempt to become a planeswalker so he can set himself up as a god to the multiverse. Glacian is defined by the desire to create and know, to discover and prove, culminating in the (successful, thankfully) use of power to close the portal to Dominaria and seal Yawgmoth away. Rebbec is defined by a desire to improve herself and the society in which she lives by providing new ways of seeing and hope for things to come, culminating in her refusal to cooperate with Yawgmoth and her successes at destroying or stealing valuable resources before she fled. I can't really speak for how well the story meshes with the rest of canon from that era as I'm still in the process of reading it (and might not ever be finished, considering how hard to find some of the books are), but as far I know nothing needed to be retconned in more recent stories. (Except those couple scenes where the planeswalker takes various non-walkers with her through the Blind Eternities to other worlds. This is different in more recent MTG lore - only planeswalkers can survive the metaphysical space between worlds - but I will chalk it up to a combination of early installment weirdness - this book was published about six years after the game debuted, meaning it was written earlier than that - and the fact this story is set in the preMending era when planeswalkers were basically interplanar gods rather than just powerful mages who had a extremely rare ability to move between worlds. But that was a retcon for MTG on a whole - hence the Mending - because planeswalkers who were interplanar gods was problematic, storywise, so it's not a strike against this book.)Overall, I loved this book. It is a piece of Magic lore that I would happily recommend, both as Magic lore and as a really good fantasy novel.

Wanna see what all the fuss with Yawgmoth is about? Come visit one of MTG's most famous planes and learn all about some of the greatest villains in it's history. This book will satisfy MTG Fans and casual readers alike.Fast paced, easy to follow story, fun read. Slightly gory.

In many ways, this book reads like an homage to one of MTG's most famous villains, but underlying the straightforward story of Yawgmoth and his rise threads a neatly constructed philosophical account of obsession, hubris, and the inevitable consequences of both.Here and there, the descriptions of military engagements drag on, and once or twice one is driven to force oneself to accept the ignorance and gullibility of the combined antagonist-protagonist's political opponents, but these speed bumps don't disrupt the story much, and the quality of the surrounding drama more than makes up for it.Overall, while dense in parts, The Thran is a fantastic read.

I enjoyed this so much!!! This was an incredible telling how how it all started I can’t wait to continue reading about dominatia

A must read for MTG lore lovers. Read this book to know where it all began, and make sense of the MTG universe

I am going back and reading mtg lore from the beginning. I have played for many years but never bothered with the story. The story itself I think is worth the read. Rebecc I felt was a little to gullible for my taste and we spend quite a bit of the book with her. Same with the Helcyites themselves. Yawgmoth is an obvious villain from the beginning and no one in their right mind should have been fooled by him. I guess love is blind and I guess fear is too. Maybe that was the point?Good start to my mtg lore journey. Hopefully the rest of the series can hold up to at least this standard.

Highly recommended for any Magic the Gathering fan. Great Insights into Yawgmoth and to the origin of the might and weakstones.

Easy read! It had a good plot but it was choppy at times. I started reading this book to help fill in the missing lore for the card game but I ended up really enjoying the book.

Bom, foi uma ótima leitura fragmentado ao longo dessa semana que se passou. Comprei o livro uma noite antes do meu aniversário para saber mais sobre as origens do meu comandante no jogo. Devo admitir que valeu a pena cada segundo de leitura, uma vez que resumos jamais substituirão a compreensão que eu tive ao recriar a história através de minha imaginação. A única pergunta que ainda permanece depois desses anos todos que o livro foi publicado é : o que de fato aconteceu com a Rebbec???

I loved it. A few typos here and there but i found this story to be wonderful. Really good job.

Habe lange kein Buch mehr gelesen aber dieses hat mich sehr gefesselt, für jeden Magic story fan ist es wert zu lesen

Probably I'm deceiving myself, and the MTG storyline looks better on the cards than on novels.However, this is an adequate telling of Yawgmoth's ascension to power and the creation of Phyrexia. The characters are all overshadowed by Yawgmoth, who steals all the attention, and JR King's literary technique is serviceable maybe, but not great.Anyway, I promise you that if you're familiar with the card game (especially back in the 90s), this is easy to read.

I've always wanted to get into mtg lore and this book is fantastic