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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great story, badly needs competent editing, October 17, 2004
This review is from: Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa: Kamigawa Cycle, Book I (Mass Market Paperback)
As a Magic addict, I love reading the background stories and lore lurking behind the cards. I've gone Samurai-crazy with the recent release of "Champions of Kamigawa," and I went out on street release day to buy a fat pack of the new set (tournament pack, 3 boosters, this novel, etc. in one package). Kamigawa presents an awesome new setting for Magic, and /Outlaw/ in turn serves as a great introduction to this setting and its major players. The story has a good flow to it and is filled with well developed characters from the various races. The stage is nicely set for the Kamigawa War, and it really is exciting to read the book and see how all the races and spells in the new card set fit together.
I really want to give this book a full 5 stars, but I can't for one very simple reason - the editing in this novel is abysmal. It's inevitable that any book of significant length will contain a typographical error or three. However, there are far too many ridiculously simple screw ups in this book. The biggest offenders were mismatched quotation marks and improperly placed commas. Also, many words are used improperly or are obviously the result of overzealous use of the "replace" button on a spell checker. It's clear that there was no independent reading done on this book before it went to press. Any competent reader would have spotted most of these errors just in a casual read through.
/Outlaw/ is a great book that provides a solid background for the Champions of Kamigawa set. If you can ignore the disturbingly frequent editing errors, you will be rewarded with a very enjoyable time exploring the world of Kamigawa. Despite being marred by the absence of good editing, this is a story well worth reading.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thank you Scott McGough for writing another MTG book., November 11, 2004
This review is from: Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa: Kamigawa Cycle, Book I (Mass Market Paperback)
For those that don't play Magic The Gathering or understand how the books help define a set of cards, this might not make sense. For those that do, this book is wonderful. I was so dissapointed with the books after Chainer's Torment that I stopped reading them altogether after starting Onslaught. I would like some advice if I should go out and buy the Mirrodin series now that Scott has restored my faith in the possibilities of MTG books.
Outlaw kept me so invloved I was sneaking around with the book reading it at every possible moment. I agree with the first reviewer in that typos are abundant and silly. If the book was read through completely by an editor, fire that person immediately. I disagree with the second reviewer. This book certainly has a unique twist on the traditional story line of ruler abusing power and child setting things to right. A writer needs to use the basic themes that are available to him in a case like this, but in developing new systems of magic and aprenticeship while creating a purpose for the Kami wars and the characters in this story, he did a fantastic job.
At times I felt like Toshi was a bit too powerful, but then I remeber what became of Khamal in the Odyssey series and he too became godlike; although it took three and a half stories to attain that level of power. I for one, am excited to see what level of power Michiko attains in the next novel and how Toshi uses his new found matriarch.
Keep em coming Scott.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining read!, March 4, 2005
This review is from: Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa: Kamigawa Cycle, Book I (Mass Market Paperback)
Finished this first book on the Magic: the Gathering - Kamigawa cycle. The story is quite entertaining, but many of the terms used are unfamiliar to me (I guess if you know Japanese you may understand). The story is fast-paced and is an easy read. The plot is more or less quite simple since we know from the start there is something 'wrong' with Konda... the story just moved along towards the last part when everything was revealed.
The downside of this novel is that there is little character development and the characters felt rather one-dimensional. But that's to be expected of a thin paperback fantasy novel, I guess. I would say this is one of the better MtG novels... I hadn't enjoyed many MtG novels since the Invasions cycle, Brother's War book 1, and some of the Anthologies.
Unlike the comments on amazon.com, I don't really find Toshi to be too powerful... afterall there were several occasions when he was overpowered. Plus he's not able to use his Kanji magic at will and actually need some time to inscribe the character - quite realistically depicting the weakness of a wizard or mage. Most of the time Toshi had to find some creative ways to get out of a fix instead of just muscling through (unlike Kamahl in Onslaught). All in all, this character feels rather like Gord the Rogue in Gary Gygax's old Greyhawk series, or Fritz Leiber's Grey Mouser.
One thing I don't quite understand is how towards the end the Myojin of Night's Reach (5/3 on card stats) can overcome the more powerful Myojin of Life's Web (8/8) - although they're both indestructible.
One reviewer in Amazon commented he was disappointed at the lack of Legends in the book despite this being a Legends-rich cycle. I disagree, as there were more legends than I had expected... there was Konda, the twins, Nagao, Ben-Ben, Kiku, Takeno, Marrow, and honorable mention of Godo...
The kanji magic is actually not something new... I saw something similar in one of my Japanese comics. But I like some of the encounter where the use of this kanji magic was quite imaginative - eg the word on the roof to immobilize his enemies. Many times I actually wished the author wrote the symbol of the kanji to show what it looked like (I guess should be same as Chinese) - it would've enhanced the reading experience. For example, Dan Brown's Angels & Demons actually printed the symbols etc to show how they looked like.
Looking forward to the 2nd book where I think the Keiga dragons make an appearance...
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