Alara Unbroken by Doug Beyer

I read this book twice from cover to cover.

Before you head out to pick up your own copy, let me elaborate on that previous sentence by adding that this is by far the worst book that I have ever read twice and that the reason for the reread was in part the fact that I disliked this book so thoroughly that I wanted to know exactly why.

I will begin by getting the easy things out of the way. This book was written to accompany the 2008 Magic: the Gathering card set Shards of Alara. Doug Beyer, the author, does a couple of things well. The backbone underlying the plot is sensible. I could envision a nice book being built upon it. This structure is mostly what one could gather just from looking at the text and art of the cards in the Alara block, so Beyer does succeed in meeting the expectations set up by the cards (unlike several previous Magic books).

For reference, the basic plot is as follows:

Alara split into five separate worlds due to some catastrophic event in the past and now those five worlds are colliding back together. That might seem like enough climactic calamity, but things are further exacerbated for the residents of Alara by the presence of the power hungry planeswalker Nicol Bolas who plans to take advantage of the planar collision by feeding off the magical energies that are its byproducts.

The energies from the collision itself are not enough though. To accumulate further swaths of magical power, Bolas spends generations (Bolas himself is thousands of generations old) sowing seeds of hatred and xenophobia between the different shards of Alara so that war will break out across the plane once the former neighboring shards are reunited.

How exactly the worlds broke apart and reconnected, what effect this had on mana, how spent mana can be channeled and stored for reuse, how five worlds could be manipulated enough to each launch wars on two fronts against neighboring cultures appearing literally out of thin air without any attempt at diplomatic contact – none of this stuff is explained.

From a literary perspective, the shortcomings of Alara Unbroken are far-reaching, touching upon likely any aspect of literature that could be chosen as an axis on which to judge a novel. I think the best way to summarize the book is draw attention to the absence of joy on the author’s part.

Usually the force that drives a good fantasy work is the author’s sense of enthusiasm for the world he is creating, a sense which is usually conveyed so strongly that it compels the dig in for large helpings at a time or inspires games and fan fiction. With Tolkien, one feels as though the stories were crafted to give a world to the language’s the author had invented and loved so much; it is the struggle of man against himself, of honor against passion, law against chaos, power against justice that makes George R. R. Martin spin his tangled web; love and loss, dealing with death and finding one’s place in the world drive J. K. Rowling to tell her tales.

Other than contractual obligations, I can’t give any reason why Doug Beyer wrote Alara Unbroken.

For all the work that went into crafting a consistent set of styles for the five shards of Alara depicted in the game, the world Doug Beyer presents is cold, nearly lifeless, mostly empty. Basic setting descriptions are almost entirely absent from the book.

At least three of the shards are depicted as possessing rich cultures with complex civilizations to judge by the presentation on the cards. The book’s offerings are disappointing by comparison. Cultural traditions and societal structures are presented only in passing and thus are reduced to the stock caricatures typical of pulp fantasy.

Bant, a highly tiered society known for its foundation in order and justice, is reduced to one woman known as “the Blessed” and a bunch of soldiers and healers. Its religion is seemingly based upon one prayer, with natives of Bant throwing out concepts like hell and archangels without any context.

I am not trying to espouse the view that a book needs to present a logically sound system of some kind to be successful. However, the lack of even the hints of one can be detrimental, especially to a work of fantasy.

At one point, Rafiq, a Knight-General of Bant and one of the main characters, travels all the way across the shard of Esper into the shard of Grixis and back. This entire journey, interspersed with scenes from other parts of Alara, consists of only a few inconsequential scenes in the sand dunes of Esper and rot-land of Grixis. No sense of the passage of time is given. Esper, for hundreds of years the only world that entire civilization of people knew, is reduced to little more than “they walked through it.” In general, sizes, distances, and times are not specified with an even descriptors.

The crux of the plot hinges on a similarly unstable foundation. Bolas’ aforementioned plot to incite wars waged by battling mages and then to channel this spent mana through mysterious obelisks into a maelstrom of magic at the heart of Alara suffers from the presence of too many unanswered questions. A good portion of the early part of the book is spent “activating” the obelisks so that they will channel all five colors of mana properly. Yet the origin and mechanics of the obelisks is given no space. For magic use to be impressive and memorable in fantasy fiction, it needs to be used sparingly and to follow a rigid system of rules. When no guidelines are given, magical powers come across as arbitrary and unsatisfyingly unpredictable. That is what happens in Alara Unbroken (which is a bit unfortunate for a book based on a game called “Magic”).

Sometimes I find it hard to tell why I dislike a book. The simplest explanation is that the book has nothing in it which I consider valuable. It is quite possible that the litany of faults outlined above could all be forgiven if the book had some other aspect to latch onto, but it does not. I believe that strong story could have redeemed all of the structural problems I have detailed. Unfortunately for Alara Unbroken, the poor handling of the book’s characters is what I’d like to discuss next.

The cast of characters employed in Alara Unbroken is quite impressive, and thus it is perhaps more impressive still that in the entirety of the book only one relationship between two characters develops any depth. Some of the main characters like Ajani, Elspeth, Kresh, Sarkhan, Nicol Bolas, Malfegor, and Gwafa Hazid exist almost entirely in inner monologue.

The one exception to this is doomed friendship of Rafiq and Mubin. The camaraderie as a dynamic duo of traveling do-good knights of Bant is given about five or six pages in the book before it begins to unravel (with Beyer trusting that the reader knows what a stock pair of adventuring buddies is like so that he can focus on tearing them apart). Mubin is perhaps the most likeable character in the book (with Kresh giving him the fiercest competition). He is both brave and intelligent (though his intelligence is mostly developed through his solving a riddle in the prayer of Asha – the text of which is never even given in the book). Sadly, Mubin dies when, after being crippled by Rafiq in an unfortunate battlefield situation, he allows Rafiq to pressure him into undergoing a completely untested and ultimately fatal cure brought back from Esper without anyone from Esper present at its implementation.

Mubin and Rafiq are not the only characters betrayed by the plot. Nicol Bolas is tied to a convoluted plot spanning multiple worlds and requiring generations of preparation, which nonetheless requires several late, haphazard adjustments. In his final scene, the cerebral dragon planeswalker, who would rather snuff out goblins’ souls than eat them any other self-respecting dragon would, is reduced to a mindless, feral beast at the blink of any eye when Ajani summons forth “his essence.” Elspeth, another planeswalker protagonist, helps to defend her homeland from the initial assault brought by Grixis and Esper (a war which never actually ends in the book) and then suffers psychotic depression of the loss of Bant’s purity, leaving the plane in a manner that could only be described as cowardly.

The story of the planeswalker Ajani gives the book is best opportunity for redemption; however, the opportunity is squandered on a meandering coming of age story in which the protagonist does not actually grow or come to any meaningful sense of greater awareness. Ajani spends the novel tracking down the being responsible for the death of his brother (ultimately Nicol Bolas). Along the way, he learns to planeswalk and to stand up for himself (at one point, he attempts to drop a childhood bully off a cliff for his suspected involvement in his brother’s death – not atonement for this cold blooded attempted murder is ever presented). In the end, Ajan’s rite of passage consists of recognizing that his true enemy is in fact Nicol Bolas (rather than Zaliki, his only friend, who had been pressured and tricked into aided Bolas’ scheme) with whom he has no contact and thus no chance to develop any chemistry with as a hero battling a villain and then admitting to his brother in an inner monologue that he is giving up because Bolas is too strong before being prompted by his brother’s spirit to “listen to the voices of Alara” and enact a completely unanticipated Deus ex Machina to vanquish Bolas. For me, this story arc just didn’t cut it.

Part of the blame for the weak character development can be assigned to the atrocious dialogue that permeates the book. Some examples:

I’m so sorry. I’ll understand if you want to kill me, or never see me again. But you have to know.
--Zaliki

It isn’t my fault. The prayer should have worked. This boy is an abomination!
--Rafiq (to the parents of a zombie-boy he tried to help save)

Look…Ajani…I should go. I need to be alone. You go back and enjoy the hadu. I’ll talk to you again later.
--Zaliki

No time to do this fancy. Let’s just bring the pain.
--Rakka Mar

There’s a war on. I need every planeswalker I can get, to ensure my victory.
--Nicol Bolas

You’re our pole star. You’ll sway fate’s favor in what I’m sure will be a mighty battle.
--Kresh

Finally, no review of Alara Unbroken would be complete without mentioning the structure and syntax. The story is told through the perspective of over ten characters with each chapter presenting a different point of view. Most of the chapters are two or three pages in length, and several are under a page. It seems to me like Beyer leans on the choppiness to build up suspense – in lieu of actual dramatic tension, action sequences are broken up over three chapters with the reader left hanging during the gaps. Some of the chapters are clearly out of sequence such as the chapter “The Blind Eternities” describing the conflux of the shards long after the physical incursion of the shards upon each other’s borders has already had significant impact upon the plot, while others break up a contiguous block of time with action clearly spanning a much greater duration.

The use of commas and periods is consistently incorrect with conjunctions often starting new sentences at some points while unnecessary commas appear at others. I have noticed this kind of grammatical anomaly in other books in the past without being bothered by it, so I can only assume that my fixation with the grammar in the book to be a byproduct of my lack of serious interest in the other elements present.

Overall, I was thoroughly disappointed by this book, and hopefully I have managed to convey why.