No Magic to be found here, and the only Gathering will be dust on the shelf. As you can probably tell from this opening line, I was not a fan of War of the Spark. In fact, I would say it is the worst written novel I have read this year, if not of all time. I am a fan and regular player of the card game Magic the Gathering, and relatively well acquainted with the lore and stories revolving around the cards.
For those not in the know, Magic the Gathering is a trading card game where you play as a Planeswalker, aka a magical wizard who can (as the name suggests) walk between different planes of existence into different worlds and can summon creatures and spells to do battle with other Planeswalkers. Now, the slightly confusing thing is that the game itself added cards called Planeswalkers who were powerful characters with their own special powers. These became the focus of the Magic the Gathering story, and most subsequent sets became heavily revolved around these new characters they added, specifically a group called the Gatewatch. Over time, players of the game have gotten familiar with the members of the Gatewatch: The cunning Jace who can cast illusions, the hotheaded pyromancer Chandra, the muscular and brave Gideon, the quiet elf Nissa and (possibly the most popular character) Lilliana the necromancer. Each one of these characters have had their stories and personalities evolve over many years and iterations of the game, people loving or hating them, becoming close or distant, but most importantly becoming invested in them (except for Jace who seems pretty much hated by the community). You can read their recent stories on the Magic the Gathering Website, and while not the most well written works, they are effectively bite-sized stories to get you into the new lore of Magic the Gathering. This changed recently with Ravnica, specifically War of the Spark.
War of the Spark was to Magic as Infinity War was for Marvel, the culmination of years of story and plots all leading up to one climatic confrontation. It was the most hyped up set in years, we got an excellent animated trailer for a card game, there were movie style posters put up, it was all leading to something amazing. The most story driven set of all time. For something so epic, a short story would not suffice, and so War of the Spark: Ravnica the Novel was born.
And what a disaster it was.
Let's deal with the Loxodon in the room first, the writing. It is a very similar style to the short stories found on Magic's website, with a distinctly amateur feel in regards to description and characterisation. By this I mean there is barely any of it. Description is limited to immediate surroundings, with little to no detail, and characters are stripped to one-dimensional stereotypes. The writer, Greg Weisman, has so many resources available to draw out the characters of the Gatewatch, but fails to do so on all accounts. So much in fact, that characters don't even feel like who they are supposed to; with the usually witty, clever yet terrifying Lilliana becoming a whiny, pouting pushover, or the tormented, once racist Nissa just being an antisocial shell of an elf. The most grievous offence was of Ugin, The Spirit Dragon. Regarded as the most wise character in the whole of Magic the Gathering, a huge, ancient dragon of unfathomable power and knowledge, you would not think he would use phrases such as "Pot, meet kettle" and "You must have really ticked him off." Yes those sound like things he would say. If you had never seen any Magic cards before, or were unaware / had limited knowledge of the game, well good luck I'd say in knowing what anything looks like. The writer assumes you know exactly what the city of Ravnica looks like, what the Planeswalkers look like, what the villain looks like, as none of it is given any detail or description. At this point I have to say that the story is not a focus on just the Gatewatch, for there are thirty-six Planeswalkers in total that are involved in the story (though I use the term 'involved' lightly as some barely even get a mention). Good luck in remembering who any of them are or what they look like, they are just namedrops or cameos effectively, despite this story hyping them up as main characters or at least heavily involved. So many Planeswalkers have such interesting designs, and a I have to stress, nothing is given to them, which is a great disappointment to any fan of any of these characters.
The story is structured in a similar way to A Song of Ice and Fire, where the chapter titles are a specific character's name and where that character is the focus of that chapter. Unfortunately, some chapters are barely even one page long, most likely through lack of detail, so feel unnecessary.
The 'new' character introduced is Teyo, who can use Shield Magic. His first planeswalk is to Ravnica, where he is now trapped and forced into this war without any knowledge of the other characters or world. I assume he is meant as a bridge for those unfamiliar with the story, so the plot can be explained to him and therefore the reader. However, as I keep saying, without proper description or information, the reader is lost while Teyo seems to just get everything. He is a dull, unimportant character that serves no purpose in the story and could easily be removed. Spoiler alert, he does nothing that influences the story in any major way throughout the novel, merely watching the events unfold.
Perhaps this is a personal gripe, but I am prone to cringe when I see exclamation points used during narration. It makes the writer seem amateurish, or even childish, especially when it is used liberally throughout the novel. The line 'and then he exploded!' particularly made me wince. Is it such a surprise that when a bomb was thrown at someone that they would explode? The word 'literally' was also used far too frequently, such as 'she literally ran up the side of the wall'. Surely this is unnecessary, or am I just being picky at this point?
This was supposed to be a quick review, but turned more into a long rant, so I will surmise. War of the Spark: Ravnica is a disaster of a novel, with terribly written narration, dialogue, characters and description, wrapped up in a boring package. It is nothing more than a cash-grab attempt from Wizards of the Coast (the makers of Magic the Gathering), and the fact that they did not hire a professional writer shows this. Games Workshop does a better job for they do hire professional authors to write their lore and stories, so you would have though Wizards would have done the same for their most anticipated and story driven set yet. You can find more character and depth in the 10 word paragraphs you sometimes find as flavour-text on the bottom of Magic cards.
