The Kamigawa Cycle is a trilogy of Magic: The Gathering tie-in novels by Scott McGough, set on the plane of Kamigawa and inspired heavily by Japanese mythology.
Books in the Kamigawa Cycle:
The Kamigawa Cycle provides examples of the following tropes:
- Blood Magic: Kanji written in blood, especially the blood of something powerful or appropriate to the spell, are much more powerful than ones written in mere ink.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Toshiro Umezawa, the main protagonist, though still very much an Anti-Hero. Some of the nezumi as well. Both are also black in the cards representing them in Magic: The Gathering.
- Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: Toshi and Hidetsugu both knew when they formed the Hyozan that it would end in betrayal. Toshi had to make a deal to get away from Uramon and keep Hidetsugu from killing him, but Hidetsugu only expected it to be slightly more convenient. Both of them knew that one of them would betray the other, but they had hoped that one of them would die first. It is later revealed that Hidetsugu had figured out before they had even bound themselves how to kill Toshi without triggering the Hyozan magic.
- Merger of Souls: Happens between Michiko and The Taken One so that they can become Barrier Maidens.
- Orochi: In Kamigawa, the Orochi are a race of forest-dwelling snake-people with four arms each.
