Aetherdrift and Character Assassination? (Review)

I understand that the story has come to an end, and I'm here to post my review.

Aetherdrift is a good story, nothing amazing, but good for what it is, a story about racing and explaining the changes from Kaladesh to Avishkar, we get to see what's happening with Chandra and Nissa, we get to see the changes in the plane, the update on the status of some secondary characters, and we get a fun story about racing. (7/10)

I especially liked the changes in Kaladesh and the potential for the future of the plane, it was good to see the plane gaining a new character who will possibly be the face of the plane in the future when Chandra's arc ends.

I'm really curious about the future of Amonkhet, one of my favorite planes, and how the plane will use the AetherSpark.

but not everything is positive about this story

First of all I have to comment my condolences about Ishikari (the creator of the AetherSpark), the story starts telling about all her dreams and expectations, about all the work and sacrifice she made to create the AetherSpark, only for her life's work to end up as a trophy in a race for the sake of entertainment (I really hope Amonkhet uses Ishiakri's creation for something important).

Now about the "character assassination" part, I imagine a lot of people think I'm going to talk about Jace, and that wouldn't be a bad guess, Jace wasn't behaving like typical Jace in this story, but his behavior isn't hard to explain, guilt for having failed to protect Loot in the past, concern for Loot, stress of the situation, you can use several things to explain his behavior during this story.

No, the character I suspect is being murdered is Vraska. Vraska behaved very atypically throughout this story, seeming like a completely different person.

When Vraska asked if they could "let him go" regarding Winter I had to reread it again to make sure I read it correctly, Vraska has always been cold-blooded and pragmatic, and of course vengeful, she's never been the type to "let him go" (especially not someone like Winter and after everything Winter has done), just a few stories ago she was basically "looks like your usefulness has come to an end, time to die", we're talking about someone who killed a number of people just because of their name to get Jace's attention, someone who killed or framed her political opponents to gain power, "Cold-blooded murder" has always been part of Vraska's personality, just like "the ends justify the means", she's never had a problem killing people she doesn't think are 100% innocent or using unethical or violent means to get what she wants, she's never had a problem with "breaking a few eggs to make an omelet".

Another problem is how in this story Vraska is completely passive, something that also goes against the personality established for the character, she was never passive not even with Jace, quite the opposite, she was always the one taking the lead and making the decisions, always sure of her choices and actions even when she was doing something very shady or immortal, she was always the Assassin Leader, the Captain, the Queen of the Golgari. But in this story she seems like this incoherent and indecisive person who is being used and controlled by Jace.

I fear that this is the beginning of an attempt to paint Jace as the villain of the story and Vraska as an innocent who was manipulated and didn't know what she was doing, that she was intimidated or gaslighted into following Jace. Which would be a complete character assassination for Vraska and yes, depending on how it is written for Jace as well.