War of the Spark, a novel review
As a child, I aspired to become an author. There was something alluring about crafting characters and entwining their lives together through circumstances. It is also one of the reasons I was an avid reader as a child. I still remember the release of the fifth Harry Potter novel and a friend loaned me their copy. I returned it to them the next day at school and they were confused as to why I didnāt want to finish it. But I had! The fifth book came in at 766 pages, for context.
The entire point to going over these little details it to outline how much I truly enjoy a story. Combine that with the fact that, as many will guess, I am obsessed with Magic: the Gathering and you would imagine that the War of the Spark novel was a dream-come-true for me. It has been ages since the last Magic novel, and this was the finale of a decade-long spiderweb of stories and there was much speculation and tension riding on this book. I had high hopes for it, especially as the cards were previewed ahead of its release. And, Iām sad to announce, I was ultimately disappointed.Ā
There is a lot to unpack here. There was always going to be a laundry list of challenges for anyone who wrote this story, so I want to put this out as a disclaimer: my comments here are not direct criticism toward Greg Weisman and some of these comments arenāt even directly critical of Wizards of the Coast themselves. Some of it happens to just be a collection of unfortunate circumstances. So, letās dive into this.
Before we get too deep into the review of the story, I do want to make sure to give a SPOILER WARNING. Some of this will reveal plot points or character points of the novel. If you donāt want to know these things before reading it and coming to your own conclusions, please bookmark the page and come back after youāve read the novel.
The Kiddie Character Pool
When I say ākiddie character poolā, Iām not referring that the characters are children, or even that the writing is geared toward children. Rather, Iām referencing the lack of depth in the characters that were presented. Vraska and Jace specifically did not live up to the deeper characters we had become accustomed to after their foray and frolicking in Ixalan. Jace lost some of his self-confidence and regained much of his brooding nature. Vraskaās confidence and determination to aid her friends and end the threat of Bolas seems to have flown the coop in favor of something of a self-pity party.
While these are the top two examples of lack of character depth, there are a few throughout the story as well. Domri Rade seems to exist solely to illustrate a person fed up with the status quo of Ravnica and what happens to those who are loyal to Bolas when heās done with them. Aside from that, he offers little to the plot. The character Rat basically exists to reveal information to newer players or readers who are unfamiliar to Ravnica and some of the other Planeswalkers, going so far to even embody this ānewnessā in Teyo, one of the main perspectives and a newly ignited Planeswalker. While the plan does the job to inform the reader, it does come across as a cheap, almost ācheatingā trope.
We got Quantity, not Quality
This also comes into play with another big criticism. When it comes to the supporting cast, we were buried under name after name after name, but given very little else. Characters like Kiora, Tamiyo and others were named and even briefly seen in the story but had virtually no lines. Even characters like Nissa had very little important āscreen timeā throughout the novel, despite having quite a bit of exposition available to them. Ā
This problem even extended down past the Planeswalkers of the story, but to a greater degree. Characters that lined up with the Planeswalkersā interest, like Aurelia and Tomik and even Emmara Tandris and Trostani were able to get some dialogue throughout the story, but there was a gaping hole where so many important Ravnica-native characters were left out. Normally, this is easily excusable for the sake of the story, but when you remember that the entire set of cards was previewed just before the release of the novel, this created and awkward mix of expectations versus what we received. People were excited to see long-beloved characters like Fblthp and Feather finally receive cards, along with the Vorthos phantom Massacre Girl. Then characters like Krenko were never mentioned and even exciting new character Roaleks was briefly mentioned, but then never seen or heard. By the end of the novel, I very much felt like this was the second book in a series and I had missed the first book. There can be a point made that the cards do not always have to be drawn into the story, but given that the cards were not only previewed in story order but also even highlighted by what āActā they appeared in, it feels very strange to see these Acts feel like theyāre missing parts.
The Endgame
My final main criticism of the novel was the endgame of the plot. The whole idea is that Nicol Bolas is attempting to gain godhood by drawing Planeswalkers to Ravnica with the beacon that Ral Zarek was manipulated into making to try to assemble Magicās version of the Avengers, then trap them on the plane with the Immortal Sun that Tezzeret and Vraska stole from Azor on Ixalan. Finally, the Dreadhorde of Amonkhet lazotep-covered zombies were the mindless drones, led by Liliana, to draw out the sparks of Planeswalkers to send them back to Nicol Bolas as a godhood battery. In terms of evil plots, it is not terrible and the lamenting of the characters like Ral Zarek did a decent job at setting Nicol Bolas up as the omnipotent thinker who was always one step ahead. But in the end, it seemed as though the bad guy went down with⦠Well, very little fight.
The simple moral of the story was that Bolasā own hubris cost him his own victory. Imbuing Hazoretās weapon with his own essence, treating Liliana like a soulless drone and overall underestimating how dangerous an army of Planeswalkers could be were the big points that get made in the last chapter by Ugin. Which begs the question: for a creature that thinks so far ahead to make his enemies think theyāre stopping him but really are just playing into his plans, these seem like relatively obvious things to overlook. The conclusion feels less like the heroes banded together to thwart a God-powered Elder Dragon and pre-Mending Planeswalker and more like Bolas was a childish whelp with a touch of power that finally got what was coming to him. It came across very unsatisfying, given that this was supposed to be the conclusion of a decade-long set of stories all coming together and the ending of this phase of the story and the last of Bolasā arc(s).
In Conclusion
Sadly, I think this was poor expectation management combined with some other limitations⦠Time, page count, etc. can all be attributing factors that may be outside of many peopleās control. For what it is worth, the novel did the job of showing us how the arc has ended, and the plot points do follow what we expected from the preview season of the card set. The only unfortunate conclusion I can come to is that the novel is almost like a SparkNotes version of what we wanted. If War of the Spark had been a trilogy, I think we could have gotten something much more epic-feeling and satisfying. Overall, despite understanding those other factors and the limitations, I wouldnāt rate the novel above a 4/10, though I think it falls as a 3 in my personal preferences. Too many of the characters I was excited to see were not even mentioned and again; Expectation management dictated that they would at least have a line in the story, even if it was just a third-party mention of what they were doing during the conflict.
If this is the beginning of Magic: the Gathering novels coming back as a regular occurrence, I believe Wizards needs to look at their previous attempts and learn from what made (some) of those stories great. They need to look at what we, the fans, are saying about War of the Spark and learn from what weāre telling them we didnāt enjoy about the experience. There may not be a perfect answer where everyone is happy and the company has the team, funding and people to provide it to us, but I have to believe there is a way to obtain a better experience and a higher success rate than what we got in this instance.
Hereās to hoping for a better future, Wizards. Thanks for reading.
















