In 1994, I came home from high school baseball practice one afternoon to discover my younger brother and his friend lying prostrate on the living room floor playing some kind of card game. I ignored them for the most part, but eventually sat down to watch them play. It was a game with complex rules. It required strategy. The artwork on each card was beautiful. And it was grounded in the fantasy genre I had been reading for five or six years.
My brother taught me how to play. The next weekend we went out and I bought my first deck, so that I too could play against him.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who got sucked into the card game Magic: The Gathering.
My foray into Magic didn’t last long. I had a lot of commitments during that part of my life and I just couldn’t fit another one in. But for many it became a lasting and entertaining part of their lives. Magic is now one of the biggest fantasy properties in the world with over 12 million fans worldwide. It has won numerous gaming awards. It has grown and expanded. It has become collectible on the secondary market, some single cards fetching hundreds—and sometimes thousands—of dollars. It has even spawned traveling tournaments with real money prizes.
With its roots so firmly grounded into the fantasy genre, it was not surprising that Wizards of the Coast began publishing novels almost immediately upon the game’s success.
Now 2009 has come, and Magic: The Gathering and is still extremely popular. Wizards of the Coast decided to publish a new series of books with a fresh approach, a serialized story arc every fantasy fiction fan will find themselves invested in.
Agents of Artifice by Ari Marmell is the first book, re-imagining the all powerful planeswalkers. It was released in January 2009. The second book, The Purifying Fire by Laura Resnick, was released this week and continues the story arc. Both Agents of the Artifice and The Purifying Fire focus on two of Magic’s most popular characters: Jace Beleren & Chandra Nalaar.
Here is a trailer Wizards of the Coast has put together:
So if you like Magic: The Gathering or just need something new to read, click HERE and learn more about the planeswalker books and read their free excerpts!
Wish I knew where that old deck was now, after so long.
Could be worth money!
