The second book in the Myst series is a strange one. It is a prequel to the first book and the games. This book tells the story of Anna, Aitrus, and the fall of D’ni.

It is a slow-moving story that saves all of the exciting parts until the end. For most of it, nothing really happens. It takes a while before the plots come together; much of it is told to the reader in the first book.

If you read the first book in the series, then you can skip this one and go on to the third book. What the book does add is more character development. The downside is that all these characters are dead when we get to the third book.

I have several issues with this book. I’ll get to those at the end of all this. First, let’s go over the plot.

Plot Summary

Myst: The Book of Ti’anna has two subplots that merge about two-thirds of the way into the book, and then we get to the main story. The first subplot is Aitrus as part of a crew trying to reach the surface, and the second subplot has Anna living with her dad in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. So, we have a story about D’ni and one about the surface.

Aitrus is the father of Gehn and the grandfather of Atrus from the first book. This part of the story has several time jumps as we read about the politics in D’ni. The best way I can describe it is a large group of political nomads.

When I say the story jumps ahead in time, I mean you’ll be reading about something, and then the story will jump six months into the future. It is an annoying writing style. The story also changes perspectives quite often.

Eventually, we meet Veovis, who is one of the bad guys. At first, he is friends with Aitrus and supports making contact with the surface. That is what this whole first part of the book is about. The D’ni are tunneling to the surface, and this is all happening on Earth.

The story shifts to Anna, who lives on the surface with her father. They discover evidence of the D’ni tunneling to the surface and spend a lot of time investigating it. There is also some talk of the people on the surface, but we don’t learn much about them.

Eventually, the two of them discover the entrance to D’ni. Then Anna’s father dies, she plans to leave but decides to check out the cave and make her way to D’ni. Her arrival there causes a whole kerfuffle and leads to a falling out between Veovis and Aitrus.

At this point, I want to voice my frustration with how the characters are named. The main character in the first book is Atrus, and the main character in the second book is his grandfather, Aitrus. Why did they have to have similar names?

Anyway, Anna is captured by the D’ni, spends six months learning their language, and is eventually allowed to stay. Aitrus ends up marrying her. This is when Veovis and Aitrus form rival political factions.

Veovis meets with some guy named A’Gaeris, and the two of them plot to destroy D’ni. After a few missteps, they eventually release a toxic gas into the city. Then, they send the plague to the different Ages to kill the D’ni.

A’Gaeris kills Veovis after the latter refuses to write an Age for him. A’Gaeris wanted to be a God. His story mirrors what would happen with Gehn in the first book. This leads to a fight, and everyone dies except Anna and Gehn.

If I didn’t know how the book was going to end, and if it didn’t jump around so much, I would have liked it. There are a lot of great things in this book, but it takes so long to get to them. It is a good story; I just had to keep reminding myself that this was a book about a video game series.

Oh, Right! This is about Myst

I kept forgetting this was a book based on the Myst video games. Ages and writing don’t come into the story until very late in the story. There are some forced references to books and Ages; most of them felt like the authors reminding the reader that they haven’t forgotten what they are writing about.

I can only remember a few moments when the characters visit Ages until the book’s climax. It isn’t until the last few parts that the book puts more of an emphasis on Ages and books. It plays into the book’s end and the D’ni Empire’s fall.

Much of this is setting up the political structure of D’ni and the situation leading to how things fell apart and led to the first book. It sets up how Gehn changed and grew apart from his mother. We don’t get any information on how he got married, though.

While reading this, I wondered if it needed to be a Myst tie-in. It is a good story, and the author did a great job explaining the culture, politics, and legal system of the D’ni Empire. By doing this, it made the story move quite slowly.

This story is very different from what I expected from Myst. The use of Ages and the explanation of how they are regulated was interesting. It explains a lot of why Gehn was so bad at making ages in the first book, and it makes sense that there would be a group of people who regulated and inspected each Age.

Now that I’m done reading the book and thinking about it, I can see why things were done the way they were. At the time, I thought the book was boring. I kept wondering why this was a Myst book, and why we were exploring this story since it had been told several times in the first book.

The only conclusion I could come to was that the authors wanted to give the readers the truth. In the first book, we get conflicting stories about what happened. In the second book, the reader gets the story without the bias of Anna or Gehn. It doesn’t change what happened, but it does give the readers the true story if they want it.  

Final Thoughts

I didn’t like this book. It is telling a story that the reader already knows. I find it hard to believe someone would pick up the second book in a trilogy.

As a stand-alone tale, it is a good story. I don’t like how it is told, but it is still an interesting story. I’m not sure why they made Anna a surface dweller who found her way into the D’ni. It adds a story of racial tensions that the story didn’t need.

This plot point does tie into the third book, but even that feels stupid. I’ll get to that book in a bit as I have read it. After reading the second book, I feel like this one should’ve been the first book in the trilogy.

If you don’t want to read this book, you can skip to the third one and not miss anything. A few minor things will confuse you, but you won’t miss much. Everyone from the second book is dead by the time you pick up the third book, anyway.

If you liked this post, please check out my other book reviews, such as Myst: The Book of Aitrus.