Miller, Rand & Robin
Rand and Robyn Miller with David Wingrove
Hyperion Publishers 1995
Pb 399 pages
ISBN # 0-7868-8188-7
A friend of mine who has played the game of Myst tells me the book and the game fit will together: whoever likes one will like the other. Though not a game player, I enjoyed this story and found that the book can stand well alone, without one's knowledge of the game.
If you are new to Myst, this is what it is about: Atrus is a boy who has lived his first fourteen years alone with his grandmother, in the cleft of rock in a very dry desert where they see other people very seldom--passing caravaners with whom Atrus' grandmother trades while he obediently watches from hiding. Atrus spends his time with experiments as one might imagine young Darwin might have, or Einstein. Then a strange man descends from the volcano near where they live, and Atrus' life is forever changed. The man is his father Gehn who abandoned him at birth, a story Atrus' wise grandmother had never told him. She had, however, taught him many other things, like understanding how the world works, and stories of the ancient D'ni people. Atrus had thought the magical D'ni world just that--stories--until Gehn takes him deep below the volcano into the maze of their dead D'ni world.
Gehn knows D'ni magic, how to write special words in special books that create new worlds. These worlds can be entered by magically linking into them. But there's something wrong with Gehn's worlds, though he doesn't say. Gehn is selfish, arrogant, and cruel, for he believes himself to be a god. He wants his god-son to help him build and rule these worlds (and he also wants Atrus to fix his cataclysmic mistakes, though when confronted with the truth, Gehn denies it--violently).
Once Atrus learns the D'ni art of writing magical links to exotic worlds he finds himself betrayed, the prisoner of his madman father, until he meets Catherine--a "conjuration" of Lord Gehn's Age Five book. Catherine has written a book, a place she calls Myst, a place she and Atrus hope to escape to.
Myst--The book of Atrus is quite well written in some areas: most of the world-building is extraordinary and fun to experience, along with the interesting drawings interspersed throughout. The characterization is superb. But I did find a couple of places where the plausibility was a little thin, and one place where the plot wasn't completely explained ... but these were tiny holes and not easily seen unless someone is looking for them ... so I do recommend this story to all Myst game fans especially. And also to anyone who enjoys reading about the plays of creative magic.
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