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Personal blog devoted to long-form book reviews and criticism.

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The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (Review)

Posted by Eric Hendel February 18, 2020

Epic Fantasy Multiverse Stories Reviews Steampunk Young Adult

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(Cover Artist: The Leonheardt Group) Rand Miller and David Wingrove's 1996 novel Myst: The Book of Ti'ana was a strange story to read, because while there was a lot about this book which I enjoyed, I also finished it fairly sure that the most interesting story the novel has to offer is not the one which the authors have fully succeeded in writing. Taking the form of a prequel to the prior installment in the Myst Trilogy (1995's Myst: The Book of Atrus ), The Book of Ti'ana is set many decades before the start of that earlier work. Following a woman named Anna who stumbles across the thriving subterranean civilization of D'ni, The Book of Ti'ana details how Anna befriends a citizen of this insular society named Aitrus (a character whose name closely mirrors that of the protagonist of the earlier book except for a slight difference in spelling, and who is explicitly indicated here to be a different person). Through Aitrus's encouragement, Anna begins the ...

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