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My Magic: The Gathering Novels Collection and a Checklist

Posted on August 29, 2018 by Walt

I believe I own 61 of 67 or so published Magic: The Gathering novels.

magic_the_gathering_novels_august_28_2018

I got my first MTG novel–Whispering Woods–in the spring of 1995–very early in my having been introduced to the game. I got the next two novels as well as the first around that same time. I read several additional ones through the local library. In 1998 or so I discovered The Brothers’ War via the same library and loved the book. I rediscovered it the next year, in 1999, at a bookstore at a mall near the University, along with at least one later novel. Fall of 1999, all of 2000 and 2001, and I believe into 2002, I followed most of the novels as they came out. I dipped a toe back in for the Time Spiral books and only ever finished reading the first novel before losing track of the series again. I added a couple more books over the years, and then made a concerted effort earlier this year in 2018 to acquire books I was missing.

With the help of online Wiki stuff, I assembled a checklist a few months ago. With a couple of new additions over the weekend, I believe I’m "only" missing 7 or so of the books; 1 of which I’m not even sure is actually a novel. And of those that are, Alara Unbound is apparently selling for over $250.00, and I’m not even sure I’m willing to pay $15-$19 (including shipping) on the "cheaper" books I’m yet missing.

I have to truly wonder if people that put such outrageous prices on "out of print" mass-market paperbacks actually ever get their asking price! And if they’re not actively actually trying to sell the books, I wish they wouldn’t list them. But that gets into other stuff I don’t feel like laying into with this post.

The following list has served me well, and I present it here simply for informational purposes. I’m confident of the bulk of it, but would counsel doing your own research before considering it complete, authoritative, or remotely official!

Year Cycle Title Author ISBN
1994 Arena William R. Forstchen 0-06-105424-0
1995 Whispering Woods Clayton Emery 0-06-105418-6
1995 Shattered Chains Clayton Emery 0-06-105419-4
1995 Final Sacrifice Clayton Emery 0-7522-0217-0
1995 The Cursed Land Teri McLaren 0-06-105016-4
1995 The Prodigal Sorcerer Mark C. Sumner 0-06-105476-3
1996 Ashes of the Sun Hanovi Braddock 0-06-105649-9
1996 Song of Time Teri McLaren 0-06-105622-7
1996 And Peace Shall Sleep Sonia Orin Lyris 0-06-105619-7
1996 Dark Legacy Robert E. Vardeman 0-06-105697-9
1999 The Thran J. Robert King 0-7869-1600-1
1998 Artifacts The Brothers’ War Jeff Grubb 0-7869-1170-0
1998 Artifacts Planeswalker Lynn Abbey 0-7869-1182-4
1999 Artifacts Time Streams J. Robert King 0-7869-1344-4
1999 Artifacts Bloodlines: The Story of Urza’s Destiny Loren L. Coleman 0-7869-1380-0
1999 Ice Age The Gathering Dark Jeff Grubb 0-7869-1357-6
2000 Ice Age The Eternal Ice Jeff Grubb 0-7869-1562-5
2000 Ice Age The Shattered Alliance Jeff Grubb 0-7869-1403-3
1999 Masquerade Mercadian Masques Francis Lebaron 0-7869-1188-3
2000 Masquerade Nemesis Paul B. Thompson 0-7869-1559-5
2000 Masquerade Prophecy Vance Moore 0-7869-1570-6
2000 Invasion Invasion J. Robert King 0-7869-1438-6
2001 Invasion Planeshift J. Robert King 0-7869-1802-0
2001 Invasion Apocalypse J. Robert King 0-7869-1880-2
2000 Odyssey Odyssey Vance Moore 0-7869-1900-0
2001 Odyssey Chainer’s Torment Scott McGough 0-7869-2696-1
2001 Odyssey Judgment Will McDermott 0-7869-2743-7
2001 Legends Johan Clayton Emery 0-7869-1803-9
2001 Legends Jedit Clayton Emery 0-7869-1907-8
2002 Legends Hazezon Clayton Emery 0-7869-2792-5
2002 Legends II Assassin’s Blade Scott McGough 0-7869-2830-1
2003 Legends II Emperor’s Fist Scott McGough 0-7869-2935-9
2003 Legends II Champion’s Trial Scott McGough 0-7869-3015-2
2002 Onslaught Onslaught J. Robert King 0-7869-2801-8
2003 Onslaught Legions J. Robert King 0-7869-2914-6
2003 Onslaught Scourge J. Robert King 0-7869-2956-1
2003 Mirrodin The Moons of Mirrodin Will McDermott 0-7869-2995-2
2004 Mirrodin The Darksteel Eye Jess Lebow 0-7869-3140-X
2004 Mirrodin The Fifth Dawn Cory Herndon 0-7869-3205-8
2004 Kamigawa Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa Scott McGough 0-7869-3357-7
2005 Kamigawa Heretic: Betrayers of Kamigawa Scott McGough 0-7869-3575-8
2005 Kamigawa Guardian: Saviors of Kamigawa Scott McGough 0-7869-3786-6
2005 Ravnica Ravnica: City of Guilds Cory J. Herndon 0-7869-3792-0
2006 Ravnica Guildpact Cory J. Herndon 0-7869-3989-3
2006 Ravnica Dissension Cory J. Herndon 0-7869-4001-8
2006 Time Spiral Time Spiral Scott McGough 0-7869-3988-5
2007 Time Spiral Planar Chaos Scott McGough, Timothy Sanders 0-7869-4249-5
2007 Time Spiral Future Sight Scott McGough, John Delaney 0-7869-4269-X
2007 Lorwyn Lorwyn Cory J. Herndon, Scott McGough 0-7869-4292-4
2008 Lorwyn Morningtide Cory J. Herndon, Scott McGough 0-7869-4790-X
2008 Lorwyn II: Shadowmoor Shadowmoor Philip Athans, Susan J. Morris 0-7869-4840-X
2008 Lorwyn II: Shadowmoor Eventide Scott McGough, Cory J. Herndon 0-7869-4868-X
2009 BLOCK NOVEL Alara Unbroken Doug Beyer 0-7869-5201-6
2010 BLOCK NOVEL Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum Robert B. Wintermute 0-7869-5476-0
2011 BLOCK NOVEL Scars of Mirrodin: The Quest for Karn Robert B. Wintermute 0-7869-5774-3
2009 PLANESWLKER NOVEL Agents of Artifice Ari Marmell 0-7869-5134-6
2009 PLANESWLKER NOVEL The Purifying Fire Laura Resnick 0-7869-5298-9
2010 PLANESWLKER NOVEL Test of Metal Matthew Stover 0-7869-5532-5
1995 ANTHOLOGY Tapestries Kathy Ice 0-06-105308-2
1995 ANTHOLOGY Distant Planes Kathy Ice 0-06-105765-7
1998 ANTHOLOGY Rath and Storm Peter Archer 0-7869-1175-1
1999 ANTHOLOGY The Colors of Magic Jess Lebow 0-7869-1323-1
2000 ANTHOLOGY Myths of Magic Jess Lebow 0-7869-1529-3
2001 ANTHOLOGY Dragons of Magic J. Robert King 0-7869-1872-1
2002 ANTHOLOGY The Secrets of Magic J. Robert King 0-7869-2710-0
2003 ANTHOLOGY Monsters of Magic J. Robert King 0-7869-2983-9
2008 A Planeswalker’s Guide to Alara Doug Beyer, Jenna Helland 0-7869-5124-9

 

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Filed under: 2018 Non-Review Posts, 2018 posts, Checklists, NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Alien(s) Day 2018

Posted on April 26, 2018 by Walt

April 26, 4/26–chosen for the planet designation LV-426 where the Alien was found and then the larger outbreak in Aliens–marks the day to observe the franchise.

For my part…sharing my latest shelf configurations!

aliens_shelf_04262018

I believe I have all of the Aliens paperback novels at this point. Including the Predator stuff, I’m still missing a Predator Omnibus from Titan; but I’m not in a huge rush to get that. There’s also a Predator counterpart to the Aliens: Bug Hunt volume; but again, not in a rush to get that.

Along with the books themselves on the shelves, I’ve got the various Pops and Mystery Minis and Minimates and whatnot. Seems the most appropriate place for the figures to be!

aliens_gn_shelf_04262018

Along with the various paperback novels, of course I have a number of comics volumes for Aliens, Predator, and Aliens vs. Predator. And rather than have them lost in with everything else, I opted to move my Blu-rays to this shelf (with the added benefit that they help keep everything standing up for the moment). I was counting on a matching volume to the Fire and Stone stuff with Life and Death, but never having seen anything about a hardcover and recently-ish seeing a paperback…I’m quite disappointed at the lack of proper "library edition" volume.

With my recent reconfiguring of the entire "comics space" I wasn’t able to find a good way to have the novels together with the graphic novels…so they are actually completely different bookcases in different parts of the overall space. I imagine I’ll get into more on that whenever I get to actually re-photographing the entire space and shelves and working up a huge post showing it all off!

aliens_day_2018

Filed under: 2018 Non-Review Posts, 2018 posts, NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

New Aliens Books (March 2018)

Posted on March 20, 2018 by Walt

I’ve updated my Aliens novels collection with four new-to-me volumes.

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Apparently I neglected to get either of the novels last year for Alien: Covenant…the "prequel" novel Origins and the novelization of the film itself (by Alan Dean Foster!)

And two more of the The Complete Aliens Omnibus series came out, each collecting two more older/out of print novels. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the fifth volume moves into the DH Press series of novels. I wasn’t sure if they were going to do those up, as they’re a bit more recent (albeit a good 13 years old now). And horribly out-of-print.

This gives me higher interest in the Predator side, that even if I can’t track down the older single editions, I can at least have the novels in my collection for that series as well.

Unfortunately, Amazon completely sucks at packaging stuff, and though I ordered all 4 books together, they sent them to me as two separate shipments. One shipment was just one of the novels, and the cover was horribly damaged (huge crease). The other shipment had the other novel and both omnibus volumes…crammed into a container about a half-inch too small for the width of the books’ combined width, side-by-side…which resulted in all three being damaged for shipment (and the package with two points open to the elements as it tried to be wide enough).

Amazon has also gotten even worse than before about the packaging, feedback, etc–removing the ability to leave packaging feedback without Googling a page or tweeting at them and being given a link: you can’t do it from the orders interface the way you used to. They’ve also apparently decided that if they damage your order twice they’re not gonna bother with replacing, and will simply want to refund your money, even though you pay $100/yr or whatever for Prime membership and they’re the ones using zero protection in shipping and even damaging the books TO ship them.

But I suppose that gets into another post complaining about Amazon…

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Filed under: 2018 Non-Review Posts, 2018 posts, NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Weekly Haul – Week of May 24th, 2017 (part two)

Posted on May 29, 2017 by Walt

I ordered The Untold Legend of the Batman vintage mmpb via Amazon last week.

What arrived is considerably more beaten and battered than the condition described in the 3rd-party listing…for which I solidly blame Amazon itself and its disgustingly-shoddy packaging! (and which was FOLDED to jam into a mailbox rather than being BOXED so that it could actually be protected in shipping).

untold_legend_of_the_batman_mmpb

But having this at all now re-unites a two-book Batman set from my youth:

batman_mmpbs

These were two key books for me as a kid in informing my knowledge of Batman and illustrating some of the villains and whatnot (as well as being BOOKS and not JUST single-issue comics!).

weeklyhaul_05242017b

Meanwhile, Half-Price Books was doing a 20% off sale, and I made it to a location I hadn’t been to in a couple months, and after being horrified at a $250 pricetag on an X-Men hardcover, and outrageous extreme-prices on a couple other hardcovers, I opted to "complete" my Batman Eternal paperbacks collection. I already had vol. 1, and snagged vols. 2-3. Now I’m just missing Batman and Robin Eternal vol. 2 from the 5-volume run of the two series!

weeklyhaul_05242017c

I also found six vintage Highlander mmpb novels and figured that–for the price of 3-4 Marvel comics, I’d pull the trigger on them. I know I’d owned Scimitar at some point and possibly one of the others (can’t remember which) but never in the past had this many of the books!

I snagged some other stuff this weekend as well, but I’ll cover that in another post, as my phone is presently busy transferring almost 90gb of photos to backup! (And this post is itself rather late, all things considered!)

Filed under: 2017 Non-Review Posts, 2017 Posts, NON-REVIEW CONTENT, The Weekly Haul | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Showing Off a Shelf – Nicol Bolas & Magic: The Gathering

Posted on August 15, 2016 by Walt

It’s been a number of years since I had my Magic: The Gathering novels properly shelved, and in my recent moving re-discovered my Nicol Bolas card from 1995’s Chronicles set. Additionally, I have the 6" "oversized" Pop vinyl of Nicol Bolas that I picked up a couple years ago.

nicol_bolas_mtg_08152016

So here I’m showing them off.

Back in 1999/2000 I was loving the novels, and followed them (keeping up with the actual reading of them, even!) for at least a couple years, through the publication of Apocalypse that pretty much drew together the entirety of M:TG‘s story from its start to that point. I also read a bunch of the earlier ones from the mid-1990s years before and have those as well.

I may have more to show off in coming days/weeks as I get settled in after last month’s move and utilize two newly-assembled bookcases (this photo comes off a repurposed one).

Filed under: 2016 Non-Review posts, 2016 posts | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Aliens On My Shelf

Posted on December 12, 2014 by Walt

aliens_00_shelf

With the new Alien novel comes a revisiting of my collection. I’ve been “collecting” the Aliens novels since my high school years, if not a bit before. Unfortunately I’m still missing some, but still quite enjoy the run I do have of these…

aliens_01_movies

The original trilogy of novelizations, all by Alan Dean Foster.

aliens_02_dh1

These novels are based on the various comics published by Dark Horse, though I didn’t learn that until years later, having never paid attention to the indicia–or it never “registered” with me. I simply enjoyed them for what they were…especially the initial trilogy.

aliens_03_dh2

A few years ago, I caught up on these–a newer series of novels, again from Dark Horse, but I don’t think they were adaptations.

aliens_04_avp

My introduction to Predator was through these novels. It was a number of years later before I finally saw the Predator films, though. I recall looking forward to the initial AVP film, but being quite disappointed In the result.

And now some new novels are out, and I’m intending to get back into reading Aliens for 2015.

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Surprise! “New” Alien(s) Novels

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Walt

alien_out_of_the_shadowsRecently while in a Barnes & Noble, I found myself browsing the sci-fi section for the first time in ages. I think I was looking to see what selection they had of Jim Butcher books—specifically The Dresden Files.

I happened across new printings of old favorite Aliens novels.

And reference to NEW Aliens novels, just from 2014, that I hadn’t had a clue were being published.

The Aliens series is one of my all-time favorites: as prose novels go, I have more Aliens books than any other series outside of perhaps Dragonlance and Magic: The Gathering.

So the fact there are more new books is quite cool—and these will almost certainly prove to be a bit of a personal “reading project” for 2015. Meanwhile, I’ve ordered the first book (Out of the Shadows) to get a start with in December here, and see where things go. This on the heels of re-buying (yet again) a “convenience” copy of the Aliens Quadrilogy on dvd just to be able to watch while traveling.

Filed under: NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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