Russian Myst Book
Recently, I came across a book in a second-hand bookstore that I simply couldn't walk past.
It's an old Russian edition of Myst: The Book of Atrus!
With original illustrations by artists S. Merkulov (cover) and A. Yeremin (black-and-white drawings).
As far as I can tell, this is a licensed translation, which, given the year (1997), sounds pretty wild.
Here's a brief description from the back cover:
"It's not easy at age 14 to learn from your father that you can create new worlds! Young Atr worships his father and sees him as his ideal. But a real shock awaits him: the object of his adoration turns out to be a cold and cruel cynic. The conflict between father and son escalates when the beautiful Katran appears..."
Notable quirks:
· The book is simply titled "MYST."("МИСТ")
· I've only flipped through it so far, but from what I can tell, there's no mention anywhere that this is connected to a game series.
· Atrus is rendered as "Atr," and Gehn is called "Gen" (a literal rendering of his name). D'ni called D'ni. ("Атр", "Ген", "Д'ни")
· Otherwise, the translation is pretty good, though I haven't done a side-by-side comparison yet.
In any case, this is a very interesting artifact. And I got it pretty cheap (~$6).