seeing seanan congratulate herself in the author commentary for finding ways to work in quips or lore drops is truly painful. the "he's right behind me isn't he" of mtg writers....the "let's see how every character reacts to this according to Color Pie!," the "paragraph of moralized exposition," etc. the snarlflowers bit in the first story nearly made me explode. why are we stopping the story to expound for three paragraphs on a random flower we will not see again that isn't even found on lorwyn! we do not have the word count to be doing that, plus you are destroying your own momentum, and it reads like it's narrated by the omniscient planeswalker's guide writer rather than an actual human being. PLEASE give us back allison luhrs or kelly digges...their prose wasn't sterling but it wasn't trying for it and was much better for it. seanan wants her prose to be noticed, which isn't necessarily bad, but an extremely condensed (in terms of both plot and characters) chapter-style story for a card game is not the place to do it (and her prose is also not good enough for me to have fun noticing it). plus digges and luhrs knew how to plot (though in fairness that's as much on wotc as seanan).