Myst: The Book of Ti'Ana

it's a review

I read this when I was like 11-12. On re-read it was…not bad! For video game tie-ins, fucking spectacular. Certainly better than a random romantasy.

One would be hard-pressed to find a better example of: book I mostly forgot, but foreshadows much of what I would become, than Myst: The Book of Ti’Ana. There will be spoilers.

This book is methodical. The couple doesn’t even meet until into 40% of the length.

It starts with lengthy descriptions of rock surveying, and (literally) boring tunnels. Exploratory missions through caves. It slowly layers political intrigue.

It is also world-building for the setting of famous 90s puzzle game series, Myst.

This is one of those story-rich games I envied but lacked the problem-solving skills too get very far with. So I read the books, alongside Bush’s Deconstructed album. Which is still a great album.

The fantasy race in this book, D’ni, as it comes to fantasy tropes, are kinda like dwarves. Long-lived, deep underground. So the political intrigue is, naturally, very concerned with rock surveying. But the D’ni are totally secret and unknown to humans above them.

This is a romance that is literally and epistemologically earth-shattering. It’s also a fish out of water story. The titular character is a human who discovers the D’ni on accident. But she stumbles on them because she shares their love of rocks. Hard-fought, she naturalizes and intermarries.

Her appearance is narrated immediately. but the D’ni are not physically described until she meets them, from a human POV.

Fantasy age gap relationship: Some of the silliest age gap discourse is like, “is it problematic for Arwen to date Aragorn??” because she’s like… 2.6 thousand years older than him, or something. The D’ni are a longer lived race than humans, also like dwarves. I am prepared to hand-waive the fantasy race lifespan differential.

and still, she begins this book as a teenager. And he’s like. 50. Young for a D’ni, I guess. But they couldn’t make her at least like 25?? It just had to be barely legal, eh? (This is a nitpick, not a pitchfork.)

The political intrigue not as sophisticated as like, DS9, Game of Thrones or the Expanse, but it’s not bad?? Friendship-to-rivals, between Aitrus and Veovis, was solid. It kinda falls apart 75% of the way through. A victim of the ending already predetermined, as a prequel for the games.

I looked up some recent reviews that were very bored by the lengthy descriptions of rocks. and not impressed at any point by the development of villainous characters. Whereas I think the patient corruption of Veovis is strong thru most of the length. It falls flat toward the end, where the villainousness is at its most escalated.

But the rocky sections were not boring. It built a feeling of anticipation. The characters go through internal monologues, very patient with their contingency plans. When protagonists or politicians make hasty or last minute decisions, or change their minds without preparing for the pivot: I knew something bad or challenging would develop. It was a good build up, a feeling of suspense without a hint of cheap twist.

Although the villains are genocidal and decide to poison everyone, this is also a story about a society dying of its own hubris. There’s no moment when the truth is on the table and it’s just rejected. The event horizon is about the abandonment of process. Sometimes it’s a moral event horizon. Other times, it’s a hasty decision, a tragic lack of foresight.

Oh, did I mention this is a tragedy? Everybody dies. Pretty much. Even the (few) survivors die, or become assholes, after the ending, off-screen.

Reviewers were not sure why Veovis wanted to be friends with Aitrus to begin with. I’m guessing Veovis felt genuine friendship… but reached out in the first place for political reasons. His prejudice motivates interest in Aitrus’s posting in the exploratory mission. This mission intends to explore and possibly contact the surface dwellers.

Ultimately, the only sure reason Veovis has to reach out to Aitrus in the beginning of the novel is his stated one: Guilt he was a childhood bully to Aitrus. maybe he did just grow up and get a sense of honor that A’gaeris corrupted.

When Aitrus’s prejudiced friend Veovis excludes his human crush from a fancy event, he overcomes his loyalty to his friend… with the following explanation:

…“Because he was not right to make me choose.”

Ohhh I love that. It’s made a matter of principle.

is Veovis’s genocidal rage believable?

It’s not explicit, but Veovis’s motivation may be jealousy. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of homo-erotic tension, but Veovis and Aitrus were kinda attached at the hip. Perhaps losing Aitrus as a confident to their rivalry is enough.

Their friendship is mostly politicking and vacationing together. It’s hard to imagine Aitrus getting into politics without Veovis. He doesn’t show much interest in politics during the early chapters. Not until it starts to effect his work. The political machinations is kinda what makes their entire friendship believable. There are lines describing that Aitrus wouldn’t have much influence without Veovis. I have those friends!

“I want them to suffer as I suffered,” Veovis says late in the book, of splitting the married couple. (he’s kidnapped Aitrus.) And his even more villainous friend A’gaeris immediately follows with a description about losing his fiance.

There are plenty of people, indeed, who want to destroy something they can’t have. Veovis seems to extend this to the entirety of D’ni society, for growing open-minded to humans.

But I am thinking, would racist Hitler destroy Germany? like, he would. but would he do so purposefully, spitefully? Hitler thought he was saving Germany. He was delusional enough to believe this to the last, in spite of any evidence he was destroying it. He probably wouldn’t blow up Germany all at once, intentionally. He’d destroy it thru maniacal attrition.

Apathy, and not rage or spite, is such an important component of prejudice. Maybe that’s what makes the final part of Veovis’s arc kinda shaky. He’s all rage and resentment.

The most believable villainous destroyer of everything, for the sake of destroying things, that I know of… gotta be Nolan’s Joker in Dark Knight. Chaotic. This villain is bitter, but his basic motivation may as well be boredom. “sometimes you just want to watch the world burn.” Therefore, he cannot be placated. If he can be bargained with, it’s a game. His nemesis situation with batman might be a personal motivation. But chaos is his villain monologue, the frame.

As a pretense or a sincere motivation, the boredom, and the chaotic mystery of this character, is believable. This doesn’t fit Veovis’s methodical plotting. although, Nolan’s joker surely had to do a lot of plotting.

There’s a similarity in Ti’ana to Romeo and Juliet. Much of the tragedy operates on missing information. R&J’s communications failures are incidental. In Ti’ana, this is orchestrated by A’gaeris. This guy is needed as a corrupting influence to sell the friends-to-rivals. It’s like they offloaded the mustache twirling from Veovis to A’garis.

A’gaeris is a writer of pamphlets. He is an outcast, dunked on for pampleting by other characters. (in addition to his more serious crimes) He’s a bureaucratic villain, forging documents, framing Veovis and betraying him.

The last 1/3rd of this novel could really be rescued by fleshing out that character, probably. And, also making the destruction of D’ni an accident. Like they’re pushing it to the edge but are shocked when it tips over. That would be even more tragic.

Anyway, with the characters lacking information and being mislead, they do the R&J thing: if the one I love is lost, throw caution to the wind. Do stupid shit out of grief.

Which brings me to the other quote from this book I really loved…

“Between guessing and knowing is a long dark tunnel.”