Final Thoughts on Planeswalker by Lynn Abbey
So that’s Planeswalker. Twenty-four chapters of a Phyrexian newt trying to save a broken god from himself, and in the end giving her life to finish what he couldn’t.
Let me tell you what I think about this book.
The Real Hero
Xantcha is the protagonist. Full stop. Urza gets his name on the cover and his legend fills the lore, but this is Xantcha’s story. She’s the one who acts. She finds Ratepe. She comes up with the plan to snap Urza out of his depression. She plants the spiders. She discovers the truth about the Thran at Koilos. And when the final moment comes, she’s the one who reaches into the light.
What makes Xantcha great is that she’s not special. Not in the way fantasy characters are usually special. She has no spark. She can’t walk between worlds on her own. She’s a defective product of Phyrexian vats who was never supposed to develop a self. She survived by being stubborn, practical, and willing to do the unglamorous work.
Three thousand years she spent as Urza’s companion. She traded trinkets with strangers while he built engines of destruction. She learned languages the hard way while he skimmed them from minds. She kept him fed and functioning while he replayed his brother’s death on a worktable. And when she finally found something for herself, one year with Ratepe, she gave that up too.
The ending works because Xantcha chose it. She could have stayed back. She knew reaching into the light might be a trap. But Ratepe said “meet me in the light” and she went. Not because the Weakstone told her to. Not because Urza needed her. Because Ratepe was there, and she wanted to be with him, and the war needed ending.
Urza Is a Magnificent Disaster
Urza is one of the best-written characters in fantasy fiction and I mean that despite everything. He’s awful. He’s selfish, obsessive, manipulative, and so deep in his own head that he rewrites reality to avoid blame. He uses people. He discards them. He plans to replace Ratepe with a new Mishra like he’s upgrading a component.
But Abbey makes you understand him. The scene on Equilor where he tries to lead a civilization that doesn’t want his help. The moment after Gastal where he sits beside Xantcha for two years. His confession that he can’t always embrace truths written on stone walls. “It’s been hard for you, but it’s been even harder for me.”
That last line is so Urza. Even when he’s being vulnerable, he makes it about himself. And somehow it still lands because you know it’s true. Carrying the powerstones, knowing what they are, remembering what happened to Mishra, and still having to fight. That is harder.
The ending is perfect for Urza. He survives. He always survives. But he’s alone again. No Xantcha, no Mishra. Just the stones in his skull and a war that stretches into past and future. And Xantcha’s heart, preserved by the powerstones, tugging at him as he walks out of Koilos.
He wasn’t alone. Three words that say everything about what Xantcha meant to him and what he could never say while she was alive.
Ratepe Deserved Better
Ratepe is the character I think about most after finishing. He’s nineteen years old. He was a slave. He spent a year pretending to be a dead man for the benefit of an immortal who would eventually replace him. And when the moment came, he was the one who saw how to stop Gix. He was the one who said “we’re going to end the war.”
He never got his duck dinner.
Abbey sets up Ratepe’s birthday in the chapter before the final battle. Xantcha asks if she should buy him a duck. His mother used to roast one. He says, “We’ll see after tonight.” And then there is no after.
That’s the kind of detail that separates good writing from great writing. Nobody who reads this book for the lore cares about a duck. But if you’ve been reading these characters as people, that duck is a hole in the world.
What Worked
The pacing. This book covers over three thousand years and never feels rushed or padded. Abbey knows when to compress centuries into a paragraph and when to stretch a single night across thirty pages.
The Koilos revelation. Finding out that the Thran and the Phyrexians were the same civilization, that the whole war was a family fight, reframes everything. And the fact that Xantcha and Ratepe decide not to tell Urza makes it even better. Some truths are too dangerous for broken people.
The world-building. Equilor alone could sustain its own novel. A civilization so old they’ve conquered boredom. Ancestors who merge into cave walls. Folk who engineer a planeswalker’s departure so smoothly he thinks it was his idea. That’s about twenty pages of a four-hundred-page book and it’s unforgettable.
Xantcha and Ratepe’s relationship. It’s not a romance in the traditional sense. Xantcha is a sexless newt who doesn’t fully understand love. Ratepe is a traumatized teenager playing a role. But what they have is real. It’s two people who see each other clearly and choose to stay. “I’m never wrong about you.”
What Didn’t
The middle section drags. Chapters 10 through 16 spend a lot of time on Urza’s worktable and the politics of Efuan Pincar. The screaming spider logistics are important to the plot but not always exciting to read about.
Urza’s time in Serra’s realm, while thematically important, doesn’t have the same narrative drive as the rest of the book. The perfection of that plane makes it hard to generate tension.
Some of the planeswalking exposition is repetitive. Abbey explains how the between-worlds works multiple times in slightly different ways. By the midpoint you get it. The between-worlds is scary and Xantcha hates it.
Should You Read It?
Yes. Especially if you care about Magic: The Gathering’s story. This book gives you the real Urza, not the trading card legend. It gives you Xantcha, one of the best original characters in the franchise. And it gives you a meditation on what it means to fight a war you didn’t start against an enemy you’re more related to than you’d like to admit.
It’s not a fast read. Lynn Abbey writes dense, layered prose that rewards attention. The payoff is a story that feels earned. When Xantcha reaches into the light at the end, you feel the weight of every chapter that came before it.
Rat’s joyous face was a glorious sight to carry into the darkness. That’s the last image Xantcha gets. That’s the image this book leaves you with. And it’s enough.
Book: Planeswalker Author: Lynn Abbey Series: Magic: The Gathering - Artifact Cycle Book II ISBN: 0-7869-1182-0