What’s this? I’m not dead! Forgive me father, it’s been four and a half years since I last posted and I decided to stop wasting money keeping the IP up by actually using this site for something. And since I just so happened to start reading a new book on January 1st, book reviews seemed like a good way to go! Plan is to keep these going through 2023 whenever I finish something (won’t be that often, I read slowly). We’ll see where my motivation is past that. In the meantime, here we go!
If I’ve had one complaint about the works of Brandon Sanderson since I started reading him in 2020, it’s that all his books are about magic and scarcely one is about a wizard.
For those unaware, most of Brandon Sanderson’s adult fantasy titles are set in a wider shared universe called the Cosmere, each setting a different planet in a fantasy galaxy. By and large the series function independently, no information in one is needed to really understand the others. The worlds are united only by loose guidelines in how the different magic systems work and the occasional character who seems our of place (i.e. from another planet), most notably an enigmatic storyteller figure who often goes by Hoid.
Hoid is the narrator of Tress of the Emerald Sea, the first of Sanderson’s “Secret Projects” written during the pandemic and funded through the highest grossing Kickstarter ever. In the manner of some of Hoid’s whimsical tales and exposition provided in other series, the story takes on a fairy tale tone, apparently inspired by The Princess Bride. In it, a young, self deprecating girl living on a bleak, isolated island sets out across a sea of roiling, deadly spores to rescue her beloved from a nefarious Sorceress. Across her journey she encounters pirates, talking animals, spores that explode on contact with water into various elements, a dragon, and some magic space aliens.
Spoilers, I should say. There will be more of those.
Tress of the Emerald Sea hold a curious position as the most “Cosmere aware” book in the wider series so far, a term used by fans to describe how interlinked a given title is to the wider ‘verse. Sanderson’s immediately previous outing, The Lost Metal, book four of the Wax and Wayne series and book seven of the larger Mistborn sequence, had held the same title for all of a month and a half. In that case it felt more like an alien invasion plot, which I thought suited the pulpy tone of the series and its progression from western to noir to Indiana Jones-style adventure. Part of that is because we’re in the point of view of the characters, seeing the world and these alien powers and forces from the perspective of someone on the ground. This is aided by the fact that a lot of the things going on that are weird to those characters are also weird to us, being entirely new even to those who have read the whole Cosmere to date.
Tress takes a different tack toward Cosmere Awareness, directly related to its narrator. Hoid’s narration is littered with offhand references to even obscure worldbuilding details of other books. The local magic is compared to the Nahel bond of The Stormlight Archive and relates to metals in a way similar to the Alomancy used in Mistborn. A deaf character’s communication aide is stated to be from Nalthis, the world of Warbreaker. Hell, arguably there’s a red herring in regard to the character Huck, but only if you remember a particular scene from The Lost Metal, which again, came out a month before this and is book seven in its own series.
The Cosmere is all over this book, and yet it’s all offhand, unimportant details. So I can imagine how you wouldn’t need to know the whole franchise to read this, how all these interconnected details could gloss over the reader as…well, details. A lot of fantasy is littered with context-less ephemera about far away lands and the mechanics of magic that aren’t strictly necessary to the story but are there to give the feel of a more complex world than a novel can expose in detail. (I think? I’ll confess I’m not as versed in classic high fantasy as I’d like to be, might delve into an Elric Saga compendium I just bought next) In a way, I wish I could read Tress of the Emerald Sea with no prior knowledge of the Cosmere. Or else, even though Hoid’s tone is what brings the narrative to such vivid life, I wish I could read a version of it told by a different narrator, one for whom magics of other worlds would be mysterious and strange, where the word “laptop” would not randomly impose itself on the narrative, where a world this bizarre could simply be presented as it is.
Which brings me back to my initial point. The Cosmere is packed to the gills with magic, but steeply derived of wizardry, sorcery, and mysticism. The Alomancers of Mistborn do not cast spells, they metabloize metals to predictable effect. In The Stormlight Archive, the Knights Radiant wield magic swords and don magic armor, yes, but their more remarked-upon abilities essentially consist of getting two laws of physics to futz with out of a list. The stories set on the world of Sel get closest, where the immortal denizens of a divine city carve arcane runes out of thin air, and mischievous Forgers reshape reality (within plausibility) using intricate stamped symbols. But even those are intended to feel more like geographically-rooted computer programming than…well, whatever magic is.
Sanderson excels at magic systems that you the reader feel like you could use. They are structured and explained in such a way that you can figure out new ways to use and combine them even before the characters do. And that’s great for immersion, it’s great for making you identify with the characters as they learn it along with you. But a lot of the time it doesn’t feel like magic. If a character with all the powers described in Mistborn (pushing and pulling metal, altering emotions, superhuman strength and senses) showed up in the newest issue of an X-Men comic your first though would not be “wait, that’s clearly sorcery, they’re in the wrong group.” It would probably be “Jesus, how many bastards does Magneto have? Keep it in your pants, Erik.”
Don’t get me wrong, I like Sanderson’s books. The copy of The Way of Kings I got from Tor’s Free Ebook of the Month Club basically kept me sane in lockdown. The stories have great momentum to them, the characters are dynamic and interesting, and the worldbuilding really feels like a puzzle you get to unwind on your own. Tress is no exception to that. But it’s also got something these other stories don’t: some damn Wizards.
Hoid, the world-hopping narrator of this story, spends the majority of it not in his right mind. He’s been rendered mad and idiotic, cut off from the myriad of powers collected from the other worlds of these books by a curse set upon him by the Sorceress, a nefarious witch who rules over a roiling black sea full of midnight monsters under her commnad, who’s silver tower upon an impassible island is guarded by metal soldiers. When Hoid at last is relieved of his burden, he displays power over runes and light, tremendous cunning and wit, and a tendency to get well in over his head, right up until he isn’t.
In other words, he’s a Wizard.
To someone who’s read and absorbed the entire Cosmere, much of this makes perfect sense within the rational framework of different articulated magic systems. But not all of it. Because this is not a story of steady, structured power. Its a world where the spores that explode into vines and spikes and monsters on contact with water might just listen to your thoughts if you let them. It’s a story where men get turned into rats and girls make clever bargains with dragons and where curses–like Sleeping Beauty’s of old–cannot be unmade, but can be changed enough to be reasonable with a bit of wordplay. Its a world with a spot of Wonder steeply lacking in much of Sanderson’s other works.
This has been more of a rant than a review, hasn’t it? For the sake of it, I’ll say that the book read well. It suffered a bit from “the main character is universally beloved and trusted for their kindness and brilliance” issues, but there were enough pitfalls and failures mixed in to make up for it, and the supporting cast all got their moments to shine. The narration was vivid and wry without ever going quite too far or getting bland for it. The ubiquitous references to other works in the ‘verse made it a gift for long-term fans without (I hope) detracting too much from beginners. That and there’s beautiful artwork scattered throughout (courtesy of Howard Lyon) that my ancient e-reader could produce only a shadow of and I plan to glance through again in another format. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite Sanderson book, but I can imagine how it would be someone’s.
Perhaps it will be yours.
What I learned…
We’ll call this a recurring segment, where I expound (vaguely) about what I’ll take away from this book and how I’ll apply it to my own works in progress.
Interestingly enough, my current novel WIP is also about a woman who thinks very little of herself struggling against impossible odds and her own self-perception to rescue the man she loves from a malicious sorceress. Mine has a bit more kung-fu and political commentary, but slightly fewer oblique references to worldbuilding the reader has no idea about, so we’ll call it even.
I think Tress of the Emerald Sea works as a good model for the character progression of such a protagonist. How slowly or rapidly she should develop out of bad mental habits, and also how completely. That sort of mindset is unlikely to go away completely, and it’s a delicate balance to strike between being true to that and keeping the character dynamic and sympathetic. We want our characters to want, and to act on those wants, but also for their actions to be true to themselves, and I think Sanderson threaded that needle nicely.
I haven’t decided what my next read will be, though I think the next entry will be the thing I’m thumbing through during slow hours at work. Januarys are slow at the bookstore. In any case, I hope I’ll see you next time.