Random House was all like ‘Hey, would you like to read this MtG book written by Seanan McGuire?’
Uh, yes?! Yes I would.
So thank you to the author, as well as Random House Worlds via NetGalley for the review copy!
Eula Blue was supposed to be a mage. That was before the war came—before the fight for the Multiverse devastated Eula’s home, and with it her hopes for a magical education.
But the destruction of the war also brought something new: the ability to travel to other planes. And when Eula receives an invitation to study magic at a distant school called Strixhaven, she leaps to take it.
Eula’s journey brings her closer than she ever thought possible to her fellow students, including the mysterious Segante, a boy whose secrets Eula longs to share. But not everyone is thrilled by the arrival of the new class, and Eula and her new friends quickly become targets.
To make it through their first semester, they’ll have to fight for their place in this new world—or else they’ll be dead before their final exams.
This is the story of Eula Blue. She has magic but no way to study it, since her world was devastated by the Phyrexian Invasion. Planeswalkers have lost their spark, but there are still ways to cross planes – in fact, now most everyone can do it, and so Eula finds herself invited to study at Strixhaven, the greatest magic school in the Multiverse. On her way, the driver stops at several other planes to pick up other students from across the Multiverse. They are the first interplanar students and not everyone is super thrilled that they are there. They get threatening messages and snide remarks on the very first day. As it turns out, not everyone is as excited to have students from other planes at Strixhaven, and the five new students are in more danger than they know.
I enjoyed this book once I got into it, which admittedly took a bit of time. I do play MtG from time to time, but it has been a while. For those who are MtG fans, this takes place in the Omenpath Era, just after the Phyrexian Invasion. Outside of Strixhaven itself, a few different planes and Planeswalkers are referenced. Three of the five students are directly related to Planeswalkers themselves, so there’s an interesting bit of backstory for some of the more major characters. Some minor MtG characters pop up from time to time, and then of course there is one pretty major character who is known to be a professor at Strixhaven, and she does make a few appearances as well.
We see most of the story from the point of view of Eula Blue, but each of the other four new students gets an interlude where we see things from their point of view, which I thought was a great way of giving a bit of insight into what was happening with each of them, and how the relationships between them grow. There’s some great LGBT representation here, which I liked to see.
All told, I enjoyed Strixhaven: Omens of Chaos enough that I devoured it in one sitting. The twisty turny parts stayed twisty and turny, and I was suitably surprised a few times. Given that this is a wizard school book, there are absolutely parallels between it and some other wizard school books, but to be fair, other wizard schools don’t have Professor Onyx, so… yeah. 4/5 stars!~
superstardrifter 
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