Liest sich wie eine mittelprächtige Bachelor-Arbeit. Das Buch hätte einen Lektor vertragen können, der gnadenlos zusammenstreicht und für mehr Stringenz sorgt. Dann wäre es als Erstinformation zu agilen Methoden brauchbar.

I like the Magic: The Gathering lore, and love to read the tie-in stories whenever a new set comes out. This one, presenting the new Magic setting of Ikoria, was quite enjoyable, if you take it for what it is. It is well written, and the way the character development of the main protagonist played out was even able to surprise me while making sense. This is nowhere near the disaster that was Weisman's "War of the Spark" novel.

There are some things you should know though. The first is: this one is bloody. There is a lot of messy fighting and quite a lot of gore, which surprised me, as the last few Magic novels where aimed at a somewhat younger audience. Especially The Wildered Quest had quite a different tone to it.

Second, this is an origin story that might never get a follow-up. The book tells the story of Lukka, an officer in an elite monster hunting force, who finds himself being marked a traitor after surviving a fight with a monster that kills his whole squad. If you play Magic and know the cards of the new set, you already know that he is going to be a Planeswalker, one of the main characters of the Magic universe. For this reason, this book feels like the first part of a bigger story we might or might not return to in the future, depending on the settings the game will return to in the future - so be aware of that.

All in all, this is a solid, enjoyable read for Magic: The Gathering fans. Wexler's most popular book, "The Thousand Names", has been gathering dust on show more my shelf for quite some time now. Thanks to "Ikoria: Sundered Bond" I am finally tempted to give it a try. show less

Between all the great imaginative novels PKD has written, this is by far my favorite (and that really says something. I love them all). Less sci-fi than most of his work, the novel is set in the near future amidst a group of junkies addicted to a drug called Substance D. The main protagonist, Robert Arctor, is an undercover cop who slowly gets destroyed by addiction. It is full of strange drug trips that are kind of funny - until they gradually stop being fun and everything starts falling apart.

This book spoke to me on an emotional level when I first read this as a teenager on a camping site near Amsterdam. I deeply felt with Arctor who is slowly being ground to pieces by a system he does not fully understand, for some greater good he knows nothing about. I have re-read this twice since, and can absolutely see myself re-reading it at least once every decade. I love the scene where Donna furiously rams her enemy, the Coca Cola truck, trying in vain to make it pay for all the fucked-up stuff society does to ordinary people who can't fight back.