The Art of Magic: The Gathering - Zendikar: Volume 1

I was prompted to buy this after reading the review that mentioned that there's plenty of text as well as art. I love the opportunity to see Magic art at a scale I can really appreciate the details, but pictures alone aren't enough for me to buy it. But there's plenty of lore too. As familiar as I am with Magic lore generally, it still has otherwise unknown details, which has combined to make it an excellent purchase.

I wanted this book since it was first announced by WoTC. Finally bought it recently from Amazon and love it! In reality it's bigger and heavier than it appears on images in internet. A4 size, hard-cover and lots of info about Zendikar plane!

My teenage son absolutely loves this book .plenty of art but lots to read also. It's well wrapped so no damage and arrived on time.

Arrived on time in good condition, its worth the price it has over 200 pages and the art is spectacular.

The writing was a little dry for my test otherwise it was basically five

good selection of art. missing some of my favourite magic images and artists

Excellent book, beautiful artwork.

This is touted as an art book, but in most cases art books clock in at around 95% art and 5% background studio text, with artist anecdotes and the thought process that goes into the actual concept art of a game. This is more a 60/40 split In favour of artwork, so there is a lot of reading, and the text is really well written and really pads out and adds a lot of flavour to the description of the world of Zendikar and in my book brings a whole new level to the understanding the back ground of a popular plane of existence in the Magic Multiverse.There is an appendix that describes the back ground development and thought process that went into the creation of the original story block of the game (from 2009) and the new Battle for Zendikar block that has just started its release, it describes the mechanics of the cards and how they came about and what they mean to the world and how the Eldrazi's colourless magic works, it comes in at around 5-6 pages at the back of the book so nothing too big for any none Magic players thinking of picking this up. The bulk of the tome its self goes into describing Zendikar in great detail, the plane its self and its history, the luring and entrapment of the Eldrazi titans, the Planewalkers who carried out this feat, the Eldrazi titans themselves along with descriptions of their broods and the hierarchy, the races native to this plane, a hefty section on the geography of Zendikar (would really love to have seen a map in the middle of this but there you go :S), a section on the planewalkers in general (not just the original 3 that trapped the Eldrazi but the likes of Jace, Chandra, Nicol Bolas etc as in a lot of cases their paths crossed in how each effected the ongoing story of the Eldrazi) and finally a bestiary of the place .. So yeah this more of a style guide than plane vanilla art book, but please do not let that put you off as this is one really great book to have :D239 pages in a large format hard back volume, gorgeously illustrated front and back dust cover, loads of amazing artwork and great details of the world. If you're into Magic the game, fantasy art in general, writing fantasy fiction (fan or general and just want some inspiration) or thinking or running a full rpg campaign in some where like Zendikar then this is a book that HAS to be in your book case. For the size and quality of this you are really getting a bargain at the asking price.And with the rumoured Innistrad (Gothic horror themed) art book/style guide coming out in June of this year (fingers crossed) then I am really looking forward to the release of that if this edition is anything to base my hopes on.