Thursday, 26 May 2016 06:09 pm
Book Review: The Book of Ti'ana
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deckardcanineI rescued this pretty tome from the giveaway shelf before my company saw fit to discontinue it. If it weren't free, I wouldn't have bothered. As it was, I surprised myself a little by actually reading it -- in full, no less.
See, it's based on the Myst series, on which I have mixed feelings. Besides, adaptations from games to anything other than games rarely do well. Certainly literature offers no direct interaction, and the graphics are limited to the occasional B&W drawing of ordinary scenery. But the Myst-verse seemed ripe for decent extensive storytelling, not least because of its major premise of Linking Books that literally transport you to other worlds when you touch pages.
My personal experience of the series consists of large chunks of the first and third games and all of the second. Thankfully, this book by game co-developer Rand Miller was written in 1996, so I wouldn't expect to get left behind with assumptions of preexisting knowledge of later entries.
Despite being a second volume, it takes place earlier than the first, which in turn takes place before the first game's events. In other words, this is probably as far back as official Myst history gets in depth. Nevertheless, characters refer to records and legends from millennia ago.
The main setting is D'ni (pronounced "Dunny," I believe), an entirely underground patriarchal nation and sole source of the ink that makes Linking Books possible. The D'ni people disagree on whether to continue a project to drill to the outer world and look for people there, with many chauvinists believing that anyone so long removed from D'ni influence would have to be an arrant savage. Guildsman Aitrus has invested too much work not to be in the "pro" camp; aristocrat Veovis, who surprises Aitrus by treating him like an old friend instead of a nuisance, has too much prejudice to agree.
When spelunker Anna accidentally discovers the diggers' progress and makes her way to D'ni, she sure ruffles a lot of feathers. Far smarter than the naysayers predicted (she doesn't take long to pick up their language), she gets them to accuse her of skulduggery instead. But between lovesick Aitrus' defense and her own virtues, she makes her way into honorary D'ni status, which hastens the inevitable end of Aitrus' odd rapport with Veovis. The latter becomes a villain -- albeit under the influence of a much worse villain....
Maybe I should issue a Snicket Warning Label: When it looks like justice will be served, stop reading if you want to believe it. This is one of those prequels that feels no obligation to shy away from tragedy; after all, it's reportedly in the distant past.
I have to say that the worst of it is the first 100+ out of 400+ pages. If I were the editor, I'd suggest scrapping Part 1 entirely and letting the readers figure out the gist of what they missed. The reading level isn't very advanced, so we'd have the bonus of a slight mental challenge as well.
Obviously, there must have been something to the intro, or I would have given up, right? School assignments didn't inure me that much to the ravages of literary boredom, did they? Let's just say that it featured a problem I largely anticipated from the games: loneliness. Before Anna comes to D'ni, the perspective shifts between her, accompanied only by her ill father until he finishes dying; and Aitrus, who sometimes has to work alone. It's easier to take solace in caves and strange mining equipment when the image is before you in CG, not text.
The story is about half over before anyone actually uses a Linking Book. That's when the intrigue really starts to gain steam. Unfortunately, the explanation of the books seems needlessly complicated. I never did understand why the worlds are called "Ages"; they're not on the same planet and don't appear to involve time travel. Guildsmen speak of "writing" the Ages and can create links to decidedly wrong, unstable worlds, yet it is "the ultimate heresy" to believe that they actually create the worlds themselves; they just describe worlds that, thanks to the nearly limitless multiverse, are bound to exist already, and that's enough for a portal. Knowing that the developers didn't write the stories of the first two games until months into production, I suspect they kept revising their ideas and left inconsistent terminology in the end results.
I was also baffled at the name "Aitrus," seeing as a major character in the games is Atrus. Why such a slight difference? About two-thirds of the way in, I finally understood that he's Atrus' grandfather. If you remember other things about Atrus' family, this may interest you. Still, couldn't they have picked a variant with a different pronunciation?
One likely oversight is an offhand use of the word "Chinese." I'll grant that Anna comes from a culture much closer to ours than D'ni, so maybe we're supposed to believe that she lives on Earth. Heck, her very name But her
If there's an intended moral to the story, it's "Don't be xenophobic." The D'ni use "human" the way Magneto does: to refer to perceived inferiors. AFAICT, the only significant biological difference is that D'ni have about thrice our life expectancy, and that might have more to do with exceptional resource availability (how else to live underground?). At any rate, we could have gotten the message without resorting to caricature villainy -- and a level of violence far beyond what the games depict.
I'm glad to move on to a more consistently favored classic in the wake of my birthday, Callahan's Cross-Time Saloon by Spider Robinson. My sources offer no alternative first name for him, so no wonder he grew up to be peculiar.
See, it's based on the Myst series, on which I have mixed feelings. Besides, adaptations from games to anything other than games rarely do well. Certainly literature offers no direct interaction, and the graphics are limited to the occasional B&W drawing of ordinary scenery. But the Myst-verse seemed ripe for decent extensive storytelling, not least because of its major premise of Linking Books that literally transport you to other worlds when you touch pages.
My personal experience of the series consists of large chunks of the first and third games and all of the second. Thankfully, this book by game co-developer Rand Miller was written in 1996, so I wouldn't expect to get left behind with assumptions of preexisting knowledge of later entries.
Despite being a second volume, it takes place earlier than the first, which in turn takes place before the first game's events. In other words, this is probably as far back as official Myst history gets in depth. Nevertheless, characters refer to records and legends from millennia ago.
The main setting is D'ni (pronounced "Dunny," I believe), an entirely underground patriarchal nation and sole source of the ink that makes Linking Books possible. The D'ni people disagree on whether to continue a project to drill to the outer world and look for people there, with many chauvinists believing that anyone so long removed from D'ni influence would have to be an arrant savage. Guildsman Aitrus has invested too much work not to be in the "pro" camp; aristocrat Veovis, who surprises Aitrus by treating him like an old friend instead of a nuisance, has too much prejudice to agree.
When spelunker Anna accidentally discovers the diggers' progress and makes her way to D'ni, she sure ruffles a lot of feathers. Far smarter than the naysayers predicted (she doesn't take long to pick up their language), she gets them to accuse her of skulduggery instead. But between lovesick Aitrus' defense and her own virtues, she makes her way into honorary D'ni status, which hastens the inevitable end of Aitrus' odd rapport with Veovis. The latter becomes a villain -- albeit under the influence of a much worse villain....
Maybe I should issue a Snicket Warning Label: When it looks like justice will be served, stop reading if you want to believe it. This is one of those prequels that feels no obligation to shy away from tragedy; after all, it's reportedly in the distant past.
I have to say that the worst of it is the first 100+ out of 400+ pages. If I were the editor, I'd suggest scrapping Part 1 entirely and letting the readers figure out the gist of what they missed. The reading level isn't very advanced, so we'd have the bonus of a slight mental challenge as well.
Obviously, there must have been something to the intro, or I would have given up, right? School assignments didn't inure me that much to the ravages of literary boredom, did they? Let's just say that it featured a problem I largely anticipated from the games: loneliness. Before Anna comes to D'ni, the perspective shifts between her, accompanied only by her ill father until he finishes dying; and Aitrus, who sometimes has to work alone. It's easier to take solace in caves and strange mining equipment when the image is before you in CG, not text.
The story is about half over before anyone actually uses a Linking Book. That's when the intrigue really starts to gain steam. Unfortunately, the explanation of the books seems needlessly complicated. I never did understand why the worlds are called "Ages"; they're not on the same planet and don't appear to involve time travel. Guildsmen speak of "writing" the Ages and can create links to decidedly wrong, unstable worlds, yet it is "the ultimate heresy" to believe that they actually create the worlds themselves; they just describe worlds that, thanks to the nearly limitless multiverse, are bound to exist already, and that's enough for a portal. Knowing that the developers didn't write the stories of the first two games until months into production, I suspect they kept revising their ideas and left inconsistent terminology in the end results.
I was also baffled at the name "Aitrus," seeing as a major character in the games is Atrus. Why such a slight difference? About two-thirds of the way in, I finally understood that he's Atrus' grandfather. If you remember other things about Atrus' family, this may interest you. Still, couldn't they have picked a variant with a different pronunciation?
One likely oversight is an offhand use of the word "Chinese." I'll grant that Anna comes from a culture much closer to ours than D'ni, so maybe we're supposed to believe that she lives on Earth. Heck, her very name But her
If there's an intended moral to the story, it's "Don't be xenophobic." The D'ni use "human" the way Magneto does: to refer to perceived inferiors. AFAICT, the only significant biological difference is that D'ni have about thrice our life expectancy, and that might have more to do with exceptional resource availability (how else to live underground?). At any rate, we could have gotten the message without resorting to caricature villainy -- and a level of violence far beyond what the games depict.
I'm glad to move on to a more consistently favored classic in the wake of my birthday, Callahan's Cross-Time Saloon by Spider Robinson. My sources offer no alternative first name for him, so no wonder he grew up to be peculiar.