The Book of D’ni by Rand Miller and David Wingrove is the third and final book in the Myst trilogy. It all boils down to this: having absolutely loved The Book of Ti’ana, I was curious to see how this last story would stack up. Obviously, it wasn’t hard to guess by the title that the story would focus on the D’ni civilization. However, whether it would focus on their glorious past or their rebuilding was a guess for me. I wasn’t even sure if the story would bring back Atrus, if it was the latter. I would have been fine either way, as The Book of Atrus left me wanting to read more about Atrus himself, but I can also see how new characters would be introduced to conclude the trilogy. Unfortunately, I found myself a bit disappointed upon completion of this third book.

My thoughts were simple in that if the story were to be told of D’ni’s gloried past, it would likely have to be thousands of years prior to even the events of Atrus’s grandmother and grandfather in The Book of Ti’ana. If it were to be set in the future, it would be hundreds to even thousands of years since the fall of D’ni and past Atrus’s and Catherine’s timeline. I was, of course, wrong, and The Book of D’ni does indeed consist of bringing back Atrus and Catherine as the central characters to find survivors in the other ages to rebuild D’ni. I’m fine with this idea, and for the most part, I enjoyed the first half of the book. Once they traveled to Terahnee, though, it sort of took a strange turn.

The true, defining mark of a civilization is how its people treat each other.” – Atrus

While it was definitely great to have Atrus explore this new and wonderful Age, it felt overall more like some sort of filler material or episode. While it still obviously links to D’ni’s history in some way, I felt the problems of Terahnee were a major distraction for Atrus and his team to solve and fix. A lot of time was spent on his team being amazed at the wonderful sights of Terahnee and its people, only to discover its true nature afterwards. From there, the whole slave problem again took up a lot of the story, only to have the authors resolve it rather quickly towards the end of the book. I’m only a tad bit disappointed by this due to how I had wanted more stories and mysteries involving D’ni itself. While Terahnee and D’ni are linked together, this part wasn’t explained that well, and not enough time was given to this important historical subject.

“Yet even as we do so, it is beholden upon us to remind our children and our children’s children of what was, and tell them tales of lands that are no more. That is our way, and must reman our way, until the last word is written in the last book.” – Atrus

Nonetheless, I’m glad to have finally completed all three books in the Myst series. It’s a wonderful science fiction series that no fan should miss out on. While Atrus isn’t what I’d call a memorable character, I feel that he suits the Myst series very well. Maybe someone who is more goofy or entertaining could have made the story more appealing to some, but in my opinion, Atrus’s calm behavior, along with his intelligence, serves to highlight the novel more to my liking. It is sad to discover that no TV series or movie has been made of Myst. While it looks like some attempts have been made, none have come to fruition.