This book was not good.
I probably should have realized that a book based on a CARD GAME would probably be below par, but I was stuck for a Sci-fi/Fantasy book for the 5K and The Boyfriend happened to own this one.
The basic premise is that a mysterious one-eyed stranger arrives in town on the eve of the annual magic festival (actual magic...no cards here) and pits the pre-established magic-wielding groups against one another for his own secret purposes. There is much magicking and some sneaking and a little implied sex and a certain amount of violence. The "mob" is always "howling" and magicians' hands are always "waving" and everyone has names like Zarel and Kirlen of Bolk and Naru and "The Walker." People set magical bears on one another and one guy's go-to magical defense is--I kid you not--magic trees. Sometimes they're magic trees that eat people but sometimes they're literally just a bunch of trees in which he hides. Everyone is very concerned with "mana," which is the power that magical things in this world run on. I vaguely recall the concept from a time when a former roommate tried to teach me the game "Magic." (It was entirely too complicated for someone as stoned as I was at the time to comprehend. Not to mention unbearably dull. And the fact that he took all the good cards involving dragons and stone demons and such while leaving me with cards like "Drought" and "Hornets" just made me decide he was kind of a cheating douchebag.)
The only redeeming factor about this book (besides the fact that it is short) is the characters, who are relatively entertaining. The crude elderly pickpocket who becomes servant to the mysterious stranger is pretty cool, and there are actually a couple women in the story who--while not as awesome and brave as the mysterious stranger, of course--are pretty bad-ass. Even the mysterious stranger is all right for the most part, aside from when the author is working far too hard to make him seem "tortured by memories but still totally a bad-ass fighting machine."
On the whole, I can't imagine why anyone would read this on purpose, but I suppose if you like "Magic: The Gathering" or are extremely desperate for something to read and there are no magazines or grocery store circulars available, you could do worse than this.
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