What do you think?
Rate this book
Zendikar Rising
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 20, 2025
The side stories carried this one hard. Particularly the first two about Akiri and Zareth. The main story is just so nothing, man. Five chapters? And one of those chapters is just Nissa going "what would Gideon do" like seven times. I know this is the standard for MTG story post-WotS, but it still hurts to make it here and watch what should have been an 18 chapter long story told in a quarter of the time. I suppose I'll just have to hope Kaldheim is better.
January 31, 2021
So, I'm a little late the ZR party; this story was posted in the Wizards of the Coast Magic Story Archive (found here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/story) during September of 2020 and tells the story associated with the Zendikar Rising card set. Over the course of five chapters, we follow Nissa, Nahiri, and eventually Jace as the former two argue about whether and how to heal Zendikar from the wounds left by the eldrazi (in the story Battle for Zendikar) and Jace attempts (badly) to mediate between the two. Unfortunately, Nissa and Nahiri's views are so polarized and both are so unwilling to even consider the other's point of view that violence is inevitable.
Recently freed after having been trapped on the Helvault on Innistrad for millennia, Nahiri is horrified to find that Kor civilization on Zendikar has fallen. Not only that, but even with the eldrazi gone, the world is still wracked by persistent earthquakes (called Roils) that pretty much prevent any permanent settlement and plague the people living there. With a plan unsurprising for a white mana user (a color typically associated with peace through structure, in MTG's color pie and lore), Nahiri intends to use an ancient Kor artifact to essentially 'reset' the leylines of the plane, transforming it back into the world she had known millennia ago. Nissa, in typical fashion of a green mana user (a color typically associated with nature and opposition to things 'unnatural,' in MTG's color pie and lore), hates this plan. Being much more in tune with the leylines and the spirit of Zendikar itself, she is worried that any attempt to use the artifact the way Nahiri wants will essentially kill the plane by destroying its elementals - which Nissa considers her family - and supplanting it with stone buildings. In watching Nahiri use the artifact on small scale, this is indeed what occurred; Nissa argues that the plane itself would die should Nahiri's plan come to fruition.
Not wanting to face Nahiri alone, Nissa goes to Ravnica to recruit Jace. When they argue, Nissa returns to Zendikar and Jace later follows. They meet and work together for a while before Nissa continues onward alone to a site called the Singing City, where Nahiri will need to go to use the artifact to transform the plane. In following her, Jace stumbles across Nahiri. Hearing her side of the story - basically that she wants to make Zendikar a safe plane for people to live on again, rather than tangled mess of jungle, populated by dangerous beasts and unfriendly elementals, with the occasional settlement routinely wracked by earthquakes - Jace accompanies her, intending to get Nahiri and Nissa to talk, or at least get them to delay using the artifact. Just because they think they know what it will and how to use it doesn't mean anything and among his arguments is that it should be tested before using it to terraform an entire world considering that, if things don't go according to plan, the entire population of the plane will be the victims.
During the initial confrontation in the Singing City, when Jace attempts to get Nissa to understand Nahiri's point of view, Nissa jumps to the conclusion that he has taken Nahiri's side and attacks them both with an elemental army. When Nahiri attempted to create an unbreachable fortress out of the City's stone - intending to buy time to use the artifact for her plan to restore Zendikar - Jace stopped her and ran from the city with the artifact where it was promptly stolen by Nissa, who almost immediately used it to heal the scars in the land left by the eldrazi. With the artifact now inert (and presumably useless) and the plane rapidly regrowing its jungles, Nissa left to return to her home village, Nahiri argues with Jace and informs him that he's made more than one enemy, and Jace hopes that Nissa can forgive him mistakes and missteps made during battle.
There's a lot going on in this story. We see the return and clarification of Nahiri as a villainous character; despite having a sympathetic goal (at least, I think it's a sympathetic goal), she is willing to betray and kill to attain something that the plane itself clearly does not want because she is unwilling to consider that, despite being self-proclaimed defender of Zendikar, the needs of the plane have changed and what she wants - for her home to return to the way it was when she left - is neither possible nor necessary. However, our two heroes (?) are far from perfect. Nissa spends most of the story in a traumatized haze leftover from the War of the Spark. While Zendikar itself is on her side, Nissa's reasons for defending the plane are personal; she views the elementals as her family and will not even consider any course of action that might harm any of them in any way, even if that course of action would be beneficial for the people of the plane and the elementals would recover in the long run. The elementals, as Jace points out, will grow back. And many of Jace's missteps here are because he's simultaneously too optimistic about getting Nahiri and Nissa to talk out a solution and because he's trying to study (and potentially stockpile) powerful artifacts.
Ultimately, the schism between Nahiri and Nissa came down a difference in relative importance between land and people; Nahiri was on the side of people, Nissa was on the side of land. Happily for Nissa she was right, because she took a big risk. Also, Nahiri was distinctly not endearing anyone to her cause with her willingness to kill people and raze cities, if it came to that; her concern was for people on a whole rather than the individuals that could and did suffer for her misbegotten and ultimately failed crusade. And Jace is, at the end, left hoping that he can explain things to Nissa and eventually win her forgiveness, both because she is his friend and because having her as an ally will be extremely important in the future. Overall, I quite liked the story for Zendikar Rising and I look forward to seeing more serialized stories in the future (and it looks like we might be returning to that, with Kaldheim and the associated posts in the Magic Story Archive).
Recently freed after having been trapped on the Helvault on Innistrad for millennia, Nahiri is horrified to find that Kor civilization on Zendikar has fallen. Not only that, but even with the eldrazi gone, the world is still wracked by persistent earthquakes (called Roils) that pretty much prevent any permanent settlement and plague the people living there. With a plan unsurprising for a white mana user (a color typically associated with peace through structure, in MTG's color pie and lore), Nahiri intends to use an ancient Kor artifact to essentially 'reset' the leylines of the plane, transforming it back into the world she had known millennia ago. Nissa, in typical fashion of a green mana user (a color typically associated with nature and opposition to things 'unnatural,' in MTG's color pie and lore), hates this plan. Being much more in tune with the leylines and the spirit of Zendikar itself, she is worried that any attempt to use the artifact the way Nahiri wants will essentially kill the plane by destroying its elementals - which Nissa considers her family - and supplanting it with stone buildings. In watching Nahiri use the artifact on small scale, this is indeed what occurred; Nissa argues that the plane itself would die should Nahiri's plan come to fruition.
Not wanting to face Nahiri alone, Nissa goes to Ravnica to recruit Jace. When they argue, Nissa returns to Zendikar and Jace later follows. They meet and work together for a while before Nissa continues onward alone to a site called the Singing City, where Nahiri will need to go to use the artifact to transform the plane. In following her, Jace stumbles across Nahiri. Hearing her side of the story - basically that she wants to make Zendikar a safe plane for people to live on again, rather than tangled mess of jungle, populated by dangerous beasts and unfriendly elementals, with the occasional settlement routinely wracked by earthquakes - Jace accompanies her, intending to get Nahiri and Nissa to talk, or at least get them to delay using the artifact. Just because they think they know what it will and how to use it doesn't mean anything and among his arguments is that it should be tested before using it to terraform an entire world considering that, if things don't go according to plan, the entire population of the plane will be the victims.
During the initial confrontation in the Singing City, when Jace attempts to get Nissa to understand Nahiri's point of view, Nissa jumps to the conclusion that he has taken Nahiri's side and attacks them both with an elemental army. When Nahiri attempted to create an unbreachable fortress out of the City's stone - intending to buy time to use the artifact for her plan to restore Zendikar - Jace stopped her and ran from the city with the artifact where it was promptly stolen by Nissa, who almost immediately used it to heal the scars in the land left by the eldrazi. With the artifact now inert (and presumably useless) and the plane rapidly regrowing its jungles, Nissa left to return to her home village, Nahiri argues with Jace and informs him that he's made more than one enemy, and Jace hopes that Nissa can forgive him mistakes and missteps made during battle.
There's a lot going on in this story. We see the return and clarification of Nahiri as a villainous character; despite having a sympathetic goal (at least, I think it's a sympathetic goal), she is willing to betray and kill to attain something that the plane itself clearly does not want because she is unwilling to consider that, despite being self-proclaimed defender of Zendikar, the needs of the plane have changed and what she wants - for her home to return to the way it was when she left - is neither possible nor necessary. However, our two heroes (?) are far from perfect. Nissa spends most of the story in a traumatized haze leftover from the War of the Spark. While Zendikar itself is on her side, Nissa's reasons for defending the plane are personal; she views the elementals as her family and will not even consider any course of action that might harm any of them in any way, even if that course of action would be beneficial for the people of the plane and the elementals would recover in the long run. The elementals, as Jace points out, will grow back. And many of Jace's missteps here are because he's simultaneously too optimistic about getting Nahiri and Nissa to talk out a solution and because he's trying to study (and potentially stockpile) powerful artifacts.
Ultimately, the schism between Nahiri and Nissa came down a difference in relative importance between land and people; Nahiri was on the side of people, Nissa was on the side of land. Happily for Nissa she was right, because she took a big risk. Also, Nahiri was distinctly not endearing anyone to her cause with her willingness to kill people and raze cities, if it came to that; her concern was for people on a whole rather than the individuals that could and did suffer for her misbegotten and ultimately failed crusade. And Jace is, at the end, left hoping that he can explain things to Nissa and eventually win her forgiveness, both because she is his friend and because having her as an ally will be extremely important in the future. Overall, I quite liked the story for Zendikar Rising and I look forward to seeing more serialized stories in the future (and it looks like we might be returning to that, with Kaldheim and the associated posts in the Magic Story Archive).
October 6, 2022
This was a nice intro into the world of Zendikar and why the planeswalkers wanted to protect that plane so much. The writing was quick and to the point as it is a short story and not a full novel but I would like to see them expand this plane in future sets. The stories really help tell the story behind the sets during release and you get a deeper lore into the planeswalkers and creatures that inhabits those planes.
November 4, 2024
I like how Jace was constantly ignored by literally every woman in the story. We love a guyfailure.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews