The third Myst novel is my favorite. It was a wild ride, and I loved how the story unfolded. This book has a lot going on, and I like how it ties back into the first and second books.

I wasn’t sure where the story was going, but this picked up quickly in the last third, like the other two books. This book was more exciting than the other two. It starts with exploration, turns into a mystery novel, and ends with a series of wars. I didn’t have a problem with this one at all.

Many of the themes from the second book are continued in the third. Having a group of people exploring the ruins of D’ni and finding a long-lost secret was so interesting. I know this will never happen, but it would be awesome if there were a prequel to this book or if we could learn more about why the Age was sealed off.

Plot Summary

We start with Atrus and Cathrine planning on leaving an Age after befriending the people there. They taught the people there a few skills and are working with them to rebuild D’ni. We get introduced to a few new characters that will come and go from the story. Marrim is the most important of the group.

What follows is a slow process of exploring the city, gathering books, and checking them for survivors. There are some mishaps, and we learn more about the guild of Maintainers. This is the guild that inspected Ages to make sure they were stable.

Atrus and the other eventually find Ages where people have been and where they still live. They also find evidence of the plague that destroyed the D’ni. Eventually, the population in D’ni grows, and they start to clear the rubble from the mostly ruined city.

There are a few people who are skilled laborers. This is thirty to forty years after the fall of D’ni, and the plague has killed off most of the people. The population went from being in the millions to around two thousand—a number of the people from Marram’s Age. They are a minority, but an important one that probably would have played a role in the canceled fourth book.

During the excavation, they discover a shrine filled with books. Let me back up a bit. Some evidence of a mythical figure called The Great King is found. Gehn wrote about it in his journal, and it becomes this specter that exists in the background for much of the book.

That is until they discover the shrine of The Great King and, eventually, a sealed library. They explore this library and find a book that leads to a forgotten Age. After some debate, they explore the Age and find it linked to ruins on top of a plateau.

They eventually make it down the plateau and contact the people of this Age. It is explained that this place is called Terahnee, and it is very wealthy and prosperous. Atrus and our main characters eventually make their way to meet the king.

Along the way, they see some questionable things. At the time, it doesn’t make a big impression on them, but it makes more sense later. They meet the king, who agrees to let the D’ni settle in Terahnee. This is when things go to shit, and the ugly side of this Age emerges.

Atrus lets it slip that he isn’t a pure-blooded D’ni. This is apparently a horrible thing in Terahnee, and the king orders Atrus and his friends to be killed. Artrus and his friends also learn about the class system in this Age.

Before our heroes could be killed, some shenanigans happen. You see, there was this prophecy about how a plague would destroy Terahnee. If you know anything about the history of the colonization of the Americas, then you might know what is about to happen.

Atrus and his friends unknowingly brought a plague to Terahnee. This plague spreads throughout the Age. It kills the ruling class, the slave masters, and the slaves. Since there were way more slaves, they managed to survive.

This leads to a slave rebellion, which results in all of the nobles being killed, most of the slave masters dying, and the slaves taking over. Atrus and his friends help to organize the slaves and form a new government, but hold on! The slave masters aren’t done yet, and they send an army to kill the slaves.

You see, Terahnee had a lot of Ages where the slaves were trained and other Ages where the slave masters were from. With the nobles dead, the slave masters decided they could be in charge. Seems pretty logical to me.

This leads to two things happening. A charismatic and brutal leader organizes a slave army. That army defeats the slave master’s army, and then the leader of the slave army decides he should be in charge and turns on Atrus. This is the second time in this book that Atrus gets sentenced to death.

The leader of the slave army is killed, and this ends the war. Atrus decides to make a new age where they can live peacefully. This is how the book ends.

Questions without Answers

Now that I’ve had a chance to sit and think about this, I have some things I wish had been explored. The Great King and the split between D’ni and Terahnee is something I find very interesting. It would also be nice to learn about why this Age was sealed off and forgotten.

This might have been explained in the fourth and fifth books, but we will never know. I’m sure that someone has written something about it. There is a lot of stuff on the internet, and someone might have put their creative skills to use and made some stuff up.

Myst has a lot of unwritten history that can be created by fans. Cyan has moved on from the series, and it looks like they’re done with it. I wish I had read these books back in the 1990s because they are very good.

If another book is ever written, I hope it goes into The Great King. There are probably a number of other myths and legends in the Myst world that could be written about. It most likely won’t happen officially, but that shouldn’t stop fans from thinking about it.

The Lost Books

From what I read, two more books were planned for this series. The fourth book was going to be The Book of Marrim, but it wasn’t released. According to the rumors, the book was finished but not released for some reason.

Concept art for the cover of the fourth book is out there. There are a few Reddit threads on this, but from what the artist who made the cover said, it was just a concept and never approved. A sample of the fourth book was included in the Myst V manual.

I haven’t found anything for the fifth book, and I guess it didn’t make it far because the fourth book was scrapped. I’m left with more questions than answers at this point. At this point, all media projects associated with Myst seem dead.

Finding reliable information on what happened with the books can be extremely difficult. It doesn’t help that Fandom’s god-awful wiki about it is worded as if the book will be a thing. GoodReads.com also has a listing for it. I get preserving this stuff, but why make it seem like the book exists or is going to exist?

This was the most frustrating part of writing this. I wanted to present something to acknowledge the planned books and fell down a rabbit hole. This highlights all of the things I don’t like about the internet.

On the one hand, it gives people a huge opportunity to share things they’re passionate about or things they’ve learned. This is the part of the internet I love. Then there is the other side where you can say whatever you want, and no one bothers to check it. This makes finding the truth very hard.

There was also a TV series planned at one point. That project didn’t go anywhere and ended up being dropped.

Wrap up

This is my favorite of the three books. I would’ve liked to see where the other two books took the series, but that wasn’t meant to be. Things ended here and it was up to the games to tell the story.

Myst: The book of D’ni has the best story of the series. Parts of it get continued in the games, but what happened in Terahnee is mostly left out of the games. There is some talk of slavery and a few of the D’ni going mad with power are repeated.

This story went in a few directions I wasn’t expecting. It also had a few natural endings, but it just kept going. Near the end, I was getting worried because more plot was being introduced and there weren’t enough pages to go over all of it.

If there was something I didn’t like about the books, it had to be how plot points get wrapped up too quickly. The last section of the book could’ve been the plot of a fourth book on it’s own. It felt rushed at the time, but I still liked it.

The Great King and the history of D’ni and Terahnee is something I would love to know more about. It felt like there was a spin-off that didn’t happen. Oh well, that is what happens where you read a book long after the series had come to an end.

If you liked this post, please check out my posts on the other two Myst Books, The book of Aitrus and Ti’ana.