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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arnie_Wan_Kenobi" data-source="post: 9893388" data-attributes="member: 7028767">I walked into a party supply store on Halloween and thought "Dark Academia, that's gotta be made up to capitalize on popular fiction, right?" and sent a picture of the display to my department chat (I teach English). The responses were all straight "Yeah, that's really a genre," and I left bewildered. Here's a Geek Confession: I almost miss when "Magical Realism" was what you called a book when you didn't want it shelved in the "Sci-Fi/Fantasy" section at the back of the bookstore /s. On the other hand, I DO appreciate the growth of the SF/F over-genre, and it's nice having a whole wall at my local Barnes and Nobel instead of a four-foot section of paperbacks at Waldenbooks, as it once was.I think, for $20, which it's going for on Amazon, it's probably worth it. I paid cover price to support brick-and-mortar ("I'm doing MY part!"), and I don't regret the cost. But my "clientele" is the target demo for this book, so there's a bunch of misfits that play D&D the in next classroom over on Fridays that I may recommend it to.I don't play Commander either, but "Free Bookmark Included" usually gets my attention.Talking ABOUT the Invasion and its effects:[SPOILER="I don't think I'm really giving anything away here, but you might want to skip this if you really want to go in unspoiled. If you just want to know more about characters and setting without plot spoilers, click here. "]it's in the background. I was actually, genuinely surprised by the plot point that Strixhaven U. is NOT really connected to the Greater Magic Multiverse (before Omenpaths); the five main characters are the first class of off-planar students at Good Ol' Strix. That's aside from the known Planeswalkers that have popped up: the Kenriths, and of course, Kasmina and Vess as profs. It's probably worth mentioning that Ral is unmentioned in the novel. To get to your actual question: there's mention of a memorial statue garden that emotionally moves the POV character and they seeing lingering damage on the buildings, but since the mains are all off-world characters they don't really "feel" the effects of the damage. By making the mains off-worlders who were all touched by the Invasion on their home planes, in their own way, the whole Invasion storyline doesn't need to be rehashed in context of Strixhaven/Arcevos. The post-invasion trauma comes from and in the form of students: the university has established a student patrol for the Omenpaths (e.g. Pathwardens), and there's growing, but minority and cross-college anti-off-planar/anti-Omenpath sentiment among the student body who is native to Arcevos. Dominaria gets a ton of flack that borders on "<a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging" target="_blank">lampshade hanging</a>."ETA: Oh, and if you enjoyed Phantom Menace's look at trade blockades and tariffs, there's a whole running commentary on the planes that have started charging for access to the Omenpaths. [/SPOILER]So, geek confession with the book (so I don't get accused of threadjacking): it was as good, if not better, than most mid-range Dragonlance books/collections in the 90s. I'm glad I bought it, I bought the Fallbacks novels and I'll buy Fallbacks #3, and I'll buy The Feywild Job when it drops. I did not, however, buy Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd, and I'm not sad about that at all. I checked it out from my library, though. It just didn't click for me, overall. I though the tressym was the most interesting character.</blockquote>

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