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eidtelnvil wrote:

Brady Dommermuth said that he believes it will be released in softcover unless the hardcover sells poorly. I myself am not going to pay $25 for a Magic book.

I agree; a book has to be really special to be worth $25 or more to me, and an ordinary fantasy novel does not meet that standard.

I might pay $25 for the next Planeswalker's Guide if it had more and/or larger pages. I found the Planeswalker's Guide to Alara to be well worth its $17.

Where's the various races? Half the fun of Ravnica was seeing humans, viashino, goblins, minotaurs, etc. all living in the same communities.

The district had been controlled by the Orzhov up until then. Any being that the Orzhov couldn't subjugate and collect money from wasn't worth their time. The Viashino, Goblins, and Minotaurs, all being traditionally red-aligned creatures, a color which stands for passion and free-will, would be out of place in a district controlled by a guild that despised passion and free-will. That's one of the reasons why Orzhov-related cards suspiciously lack any showing of diversity -aside from the undead, Orzhov is almost entirely composed of supposedly more civilized races, such as humans, being easier to control.

That being said, Ravnica is Ravnica and for the most part all sorts of races are living together and so it's odd not seeing anything but humans, I agree.

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Anyway, in my opinion, the commas were tolerable just so long as he doesn't make a habit of over-using them throughout the novel. Aside from the things that Eidtelnvil has covered and which I agree are questionable, I'm looking forward to reading the novel in it's entirety.

eidtelnvil wrote:

Brady Dommermuth said that he believes it will be released in softcover unless the hardcover sells poorly. I myself am not going to pay $25 for a Magic book.

I'm rather torn on whether I'm willing to fork over that much cash, but I can't see the average MtG player doing so. I hope they take that into account...

3 - Nice to see Ravnica again. Wish we got to learn more about the fallout from the destruction of the Guildpact, but I understand that it doesn't fit in with this chapter.

Agreed. Actually, if a signifigant portion of the book takes place on Ravnica, that'll go a long way towards me putting up cash for the thing.

4 - Boring action is boring.

Double agree. Actually, that begs the question: why does Wizards insist on its novels being action-adventure driven? Prose is a terrible medium for action. I mean, you can do it, but you have to be really talented. McGough did it in Kamigawa, although he accomplished it more by keeping the detail in the action sequences brisk and keeping the other parts of the books detailed and interesting.

This first chapter does a decent job of setting up Lilliana as an entertaining character, and I'm intrigued to find out more about her and her story, but the action sequence was overwritten and failed to establish anything interesting about her attackers. It seemed like a comic or movie that opens with an explosion... it always strikes me, fairly or not, as the cheapest hook possible when the author has nothing interesting to say (I hold out hope for AoA that this isn't the case).