Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum: A Magic: The Gathering Set Novel [Mass Market Paperback]

Review may contain a few small spoilers.

The first thing I have to ask about this book is who in the heck edited it? Nobody? It certainly seems that way. From beginning to end, the book is riddled with typographical errors, misplaced punctuation, misspelled words, improperly used words, and just a general disregard for grammar and syntax. It looks like a first draft to me - like Robert B. Wintermute just sat down and sneezed this thing out and that was it.

The second thing I want to point out is that the author clearly didn't realize that one of the defining attributes of the Zendikar set was NOT Nissa Revane and her elves - it was the addition of Sorin Markov, the Vampire planeswalker, and the addition of so many good, playable vampires. What was one of the first spoiled cards from Zendikar? Sorin. Who's on the cardboard standees for this set?? Sorin. Who's on all the promo posters?? Sorin. NOBODY CARES ABOUT NISSA REVANE. It totally baffles me that this entire story is written in third person limited omniscience from Nissa's point of view. It's like... What was Wintermute thinking? That people were buying the book to read about her? No, you dolt, we want to read more about Sorin. If he had to write it in third person from essentially Nissa's point of view, could he have least written it with total omniscience? We get no insight into Sorin's thoughts, or Anowon's. I hate limited omniscience. We want to read about Sorin. It's not even "revealed" that he's a vampire until somewhere around Chapter 18. (Of course, if you're reading this book, odds are rather great that you already KNOW that he's a vampire....)

The same words and exchanges are used repeatedly throughout the book. A lot of times he'll use the same phrase or adjective over and over in the space of one or two paragraphs. Also, I can't even remember how many times this took place:

1. Nissa says something obvious/annoying/unimportant.
2. Sorin says something akin to "Way to go, Captain Obvious."
3. "Nissa ignored him."

Nissa ignored him. Nissa ignored him. Nissa ignored him. That's another thing I couldn't stand. Nissa constantly ignored Sorin. Not only does she ignore him, after multiple displays of pure ownage on Sorin's part (though these became woefully few and far between through the book. Time and time again I would brace myself for Sorin to do something totally awesome, only to have it come to nothing), Nissa is still second guessing him. In her very first meeting with him, the first thing she sees him do is walk brazenly up to a massive number of brood lineage and just rot them all in a second. Even after Sorin tells her more about what he's doing there and what the Eldrazi will do if they get out, it's like she has this great hollow devoid of gray matter between her ears. She must think Sorin is just making it all up.

One thing I hate about this book is how the author portrayed Sorin Markov. Sorin is thousands of years old. He's older than Ajani, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, Garruk, Elspeth, Sarkhan, Tezzeret, Nissa and Gideon combined. The only planeswalker who trumps Sorin in age is Nicol Bolas. If the mana or whatever of Zendikar is somehow weakening him it should be obvious that he isn't functioning at "full power" but instead the vampire planeswalker is practically portrayed as plucky comic relief. He remains a relatively flat character throughout the story who makes quips and one-liners and basically just stands around while Nissa and Anowon talk until he can't stand it anymore before he says "Okay, that's great but can we get going now?" In a number of instances, Sorin just gets knocked unconscious by stuff like the Roil, and I can only assume that it's because Wintermute can't write action for more than one character simultaneously. He's also way too easily jabbed at for one who's supposedly been around for so long - one second he'll be making a joke and smiling, then Anowon will say something aimed at "getting to" him, and lo and behold, it does. His smile disappears and he just glares. He does this any time someone responds poorly to his jives. He just seems like a joke throughout the book and to be honest, he should have just killed Nissa.

I did like Anowon's character and the way he and Sorin interacted. I do wish that the way Anowon was developed had been the way he'd developed Sorin, especially since Anowon and Nissa seem to do a lot more conversing than Sorin and Nissa.

The end of the book was extremely unsatisfying, but I won't go into great detail because who knows, someone out there might just want to read it.

I am a long-standing fan of the books that have been released for the Magic: the Gathering sets. I was quite eager to read the book for the Zendikar cycle, because I was particularly interested to know about the Eldrazi, and to see characters like Sorin Markov in action.

When I first started reading the book, I was quite taken in by it. The character of Nissa Revane was decently fleshed out, and the distinctions between the Joraga elves and the Tajuru elves were intriguing. Sorin Markov's introduction was just about everything I hoped it would be. I was quite eager to read more.

The longer the book went on, the more my enthusiasm for it dampened. The poor was very poorly edited, and typos were everywhere. At points, I had to reread sections to make sure I understood what was going on, due entirely to the typos. I was blown away when I noticed that the main character's name was misspelled, consistently, throughout the entire book. It's even spelled correctly on the back of the book, but then screwed up every time it appears in print. I've seen a lot of Mass Market Paperbacks that were obviously slammed out in a few months in order to coincide with something like a set release or movie release, but few of them suffered from such a lack of editing as this book.

The story itself is interesting, and reasonably gripping, but I'm afraid that this is mostly due to the subject matter itself, and not the author's clever craft. This was Robert B. Wintermute's first novel, and in reading the text, it becomes fairly obvious. Things that are meant to be suspenseful are painfully obvious, and numerous plot points that get built up in suspense fizzle out in a pathetic manner when they finally occur.

I don't mean to paint the book in a completely unfavorable light, however. The character development that goes on is quite good (but this only makes it more frustrating when a great deal of it is entirely cast to the wayside in the last chapter of the book), and the world is fleshed out in a pleasing manner. Fans of the flavor in the Zendikar set for Magic the Gathering will be delighted to read about the vampires of Ghet, merfolk of Tazeem, and The Roil. Just don't expect too much from this particular book. There are far better Magic books to read, but to be fair, there are far worse, as well.

If you are a fan of Magic: the Gathering and its storylines, I would recommend this book. Otherwise, you would probably be better off reading something else.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

As a dedicated Vorthos who has read most of the Magic: The Gathering novels from the past fifteen years (and a dozen of them again quite recently in anticipation of Karn's return), I was extremely disappointed by Robert Wintermute. This book was a chore to read.

First of all, "Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum" is riddled with technical errors. Typos abound, and Wintermute's syntax and word choice seem better fitted for a middle school assignment than a popular fantasy series. A staggering number of sentences follow a "Then [...] and [...] and [...]" pattern which sets the tone for the flat, repetitive plot. Fight scenes have no punch. His descriptions about the various locales of Zendikar are interesting enough, but Wintermute has yet to grasp the concept of "less is more"; there are only so many wide expanses of rocky ground or jagged mountain I can stand to have explained at length before I stop caring entirely.

"Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum" also lacks for content. I read Magic: The Gathering novels to learn more about the characters and epic storylines only hinted at in the cards and in magicthegathering.com articles. I do not read them in order to experience a fruitless quest with cardboard cut-outs in real-time. Nissa Revane begins the novel as a proud warrior out of her element and doesn't change or learn a thing for the next 311 pages. Sorin Markov has an exciting introduction and seems like a witty, mysterious foil to Nissa's serious staleness, but nothing ever develops between the two. Worse still, we learn nothing about him or his centuries-long past that can't be gleamed from his short bio on WotC's website (and, as another reviewer pointed out, there is a ridiculous amount of effort wasted in a misguided attempt to make his notorious vampirism a shocking revelation). Anowon - by far the most compelling character Wintermute writes - is nonetheless utterly inconsequential. I wanted to like him and to discover how being a learned, patient vampire played into themes or the storyline, but it apparently did not; the novel ended before Anowon could do anything of any importance.

The pacing, too, is simply terrible. By the third time I read a line to the effect of "They traveled thus for three days and nights until they ran out of food and water", I was already rolling my eyes. There are no flashbacks or foreshadowing discussions to break up the monotony; just a grinding account of every step of a journey that the characters don't even seem to have a good idea about why they're making in the first place. In the future, Wintermute would do well to pick a dozen or so of his favorite locations and write a scene rather than a log.

This brings me to my greatest letdown: the Eldrazi. I picked up this book hoping to learn about their origin, their past with Sorin Markov, and, most importantly, how a handful of planeswalkers could overcome beings that are represented as being so monstrously powerful in the Magic: The Gathering card game. "Zendikar: In the Teeth of Akoum" answered precisely none of these questions. The characters' first encounters with the brood lineage are adequately strange and intriguing, but by the time we finally meet the Eldrazi titans, the novel is over. No second book has been announced. No Magic: The Gathering set in the near future is returning to the plane. I just trekked through 312 tedious pages to reach a cliffhanger I already knew existed, without so much as a hint of what's to come.

Altogether, I'm sorry to say I would not recommend this book to anyone. A person looking for a compelling fantasy novel can do much better than this flawed, flat read (might I recommend the far superior Planeswalker series by Ari Marmell, Laura Resnick, and Matthew Stover?), and a Magic: The Gathering fan looking to delve deeper into the fantastic world that the Zendikar block's design and creative teams built will be thoroughly crushed.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 11 reviews  2.2 out of 5 stars