Tress of the Emerald Sea by: Brandon Sanderson

 

In 2022 Brandon Sanderson shook the publishing industry by announcing that throughout 2020 he had written in secret four novels, largely for himself to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.  These four novels were announced to be published through his own company, Dragonsteel Entertainment, in deluxe editions quarterly throughout 2023, available for purchase through what would become the biggest Kickstarter of all time (at the time of writing).  Three of these secret projects are set in the Cosmere, one is a standalone in its own universe, and despite ordering them I am just now getting around to starting them.  Tress of the Emerald Sea is the first of the four, and the secret project Sanderson explicitly wrote as a gift to his wife, Emily.  This fact is immediately apparent in the opening chapters of Tress of the Emerald Sea, chronicling the young Tress’s infatuation and attraction to the son of the duke Charlie and how Charlie was taken away from her due to a ducal duty to marry, though promising that with each rejection of a suitor in each country he visits, he will send her a cup to show that he still loves her.  Several cups arrive first with notes, then on their own, then silence.  Something has broken Charlie, only made worse by the announcement that the duke’s nephew will be the heir and Charlie has been sold to a figure only known as the Sorceress.  Sanderson’s inspiration of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, largely the film adaptation directed by Rob Reiner, is admitted in his author’s note at the end of the novel but the tone is apparent.  Several other reviewers have suggested Terry Pratchett’s Discworld as an inspiration, but I’d even argue that isn’t tonally there.  The tone of the novel works so well as a gift to the woman Sanderson loves, something that is dripped into every page of the novel making this already a very different feeling from Sanderson’s usual style.  It’s a novel that just flows differently, at an almost leisurely pace.

 

Tress of the Emerald Sea is the first Cosmere novel to be from the perspective of Hoid, telling the story to a captive audience (the reader) long after the fact, and taking quite the large part in the story.  This means that the novel actually feels like a nice rundown of who Hoid is, several asides in the very Hoid manner that eases you into this story and adds to the Goldman homage at the center of the book.  It also helps guide through for when Hoid actually appears in the story, he is cursed by the same Sorceress that has Charlie into idiocy.  Well, more than his usual idiocy.  There’s a surprising amount of Cosmere lore in the novel as well, characters that readers of Sanderson will recognize the species of and potentially other cameos and magic systems, but this is also a book that actually might work well as an introduction to the Cosmere in general.  Apart from being a rundown of who Hoid is and his general deal, Tress of the Emerald Sea is largely standalone with the plot and is quite unique in its magic system.  The premise of this particular world in the Cosmere is an island world where the many seas are not made of water, but spores that react violently with water in different ways.  Some people are able to use the spores to their advantage, there are creatures living among certain spores, the weather itself can be dangerous, and spore technology has been imagined.  It’s a wonderfully weird system of magic, not entirely representing Sanderson’s usual magic system, and this becomes one that Sanderson really only goes into the basic mechanics of since the novel is meant to be a standalone and technically shorter than much of the rest of the Cosmere.  This is more to the advantage of the novel so Sanderson can focus on Tress as a protagonist and character.

 

Tress of the Emerald Sea as the title indicates, ends up becoming a story about pirates.  Tress as a character begins the novel isolated, falling in love with Charlie because of his ability to tell a tale and sneak out to se her.  Tress isn’t her real name and the Rock that she lives upon is incredibly boring, Charlie’s capture giving her a damsel in distress to rescue and the catalyst for change.  As a protagonist, Tress is perhaps more simple than some of the other protagonists of the Cosmere, but this is largely due to the added layer of separation from being a usual third person perspective of other books and Tress of the Emerald Sea’s first person perspective from Hoid.  Tress’s journey is one of largely growing up and learning to understand how people and life works, how to affect people and get people on her side.  She learns how to use influence but is haunted throughout by stumbling into these lies from joining a pirate crew and forming a conspiracy against the cursed captain Crow who wishes to trade her to a dragon.  Oh yes, there is finally a dragon on-page for a Cosmere novel.  The rest of the characters are the crew, the general workers being blended into the many Dougs in the narration, but the named characters all fit specific pirate archetypes.  There’s a ship’s doctor who is utterly insane and ready to chop off limbs and organs to consume, a carpenter obsessed with training, a sharpshooter who couldn’t hit the side of a barn, and a cabin boy who has lost his agency.  And Huck the talking rat.  The absurdity of these characters is through the lens of Hoid and that does wonders for selling it.

 

Overall, Tress of the Emerald Sea is so completely different from everything else that Sanderson has done, being one of the secret projects written for his wife adding the idea of a love story even in the large stretches of the novel that aren’t concerned with the love story.  It’s honestly the perfect introduction to Sanderson’s style despite being such a different type of story being told and the piracy adventure just adds to the wonderful voice and prose Sanderson employs to make it work.  10/10.