Isles of the Emberdark by: Brandon Sanderson

 

It’s a tale as old as time really.  The world is plunged into a global pandemic, the United States Government drops the ball on enforcing lockdowns, internationally renowned fantasy author gets bored, internationally renowned fantasy author writes five full length novels unprompted and keeps them secret from the world until four can be published through Kickstarter and certain blows at Amazon/Audible can be made, story over.  Except no, it isn’t.  There was a fifth secret project.  One not published through the Kickstarter campaign.  And yet.  This is not that story either.  Because Brandon Sanderson just doesn’t seem to know how to stop writing, even when he's already writing and publishing at least one novel a year because to coincide with the Kickstarter campaign for the leatherbound edition of Words of Radiance, it was announced another secret project had been written and would be published to backers first before a general release in early next year.

 

Isles of the Emberdark is the result, rewriting the earlier novella Sixth of the Dusk in its first part before spiraling out into what I can only describe as a prequel for the next era of Mistborn and the Cosmere at large.  This is a novel that I would be fascinated to see a non-Cosmere fan read because once again there is just a lot of integrated worldbuilding as there had been in The Sunlit Man, though less required knowledge of specific stories and instead just some specific characters.  Half of the narrative isn’t actually spent in the perspective of Sixth of the Dusk, though he is the other major player and the point of view essentially for the first part of the narrative.  Instead, Sanderson finally gets to write a novel with a dragon protagonist in Starling, an adolescent by dragon standards, longer lived by humans, exiled from her home planet and part of a spaceship crew searching for perpendicularity.  Sanderson’s use of imagery for the chapters introducing Starling immediately shift a lot of the tone of the novel from a rather serious narrative about Dusk attempting to save his people from the Ones Above.  Starling’s story isn’t a comedic one, however, her own sense of identity and place in the cosmere is quite compelling.  There’s a lot in here about how dragons work in the cosmere, more than anything else Sanderson has published.  The idea of Hoid having a dragon as an apprentice is also just something that is hilarious, though Hoid’s extended cameo actually feels a little excessive.  Yes, I usually adore Hoid’s points, but here his role is a role he has played before and better in other books, especially The Stormlight Archive.

 

The integration of Sixth of the Dust into the first part of the book is actually excellent: it is split between chapters in Dusk’s present set approximately six years after the events of the novella.  Now it had been a while since I read Sixth of the Dust so I am unsure if Sanderson actually did any rewriting.  It is likely he did, his prose in these secret projects has developed since when the novella was originally written and as presented here there wasn’t anything stylistically different between the present plotline.  Dusk’s general perspective is also one of someone on the edge of colonization, the Scadrian Empire who represent the Ones Above.  Sanderson uses this as an incredibly effective threat because the native population of the First of the Sun have always been under the thumb of an empire.  They are only going to make their lives worse, the empire is only getting bigger and conquering more planets.  That’s what I mean when I say this feels like a prelude to the next era of Mistborn, it’s Sanderson’s first earnest attempt at a space age, science fantasy story.  For Isles of the Emberdark it works because it grounds itself with its two protagonists and giving longtime fans resistant to change some other touchpoints to come to, but I do hope that going forward this is just testing the waters for bigger things.  Perhaps going to more high concept ideas.  The general Cosmere magic systems are present here, the Emberdark of the title is essentially part of the Cognitive Realm, though with its own quirks and a very deep understanding of how the people of the First of the Sun are part of both in a way.

 

Overall, Isles of the Emberdark is honestly a book where Brandon Sanderson does things a bit differently than what has come before.  Like Tess of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, it works so well because it is quite different from what has come before and indicates Sanderson wanting to push forward with what he has been doing these past 20 years with the Cosmere.  It’s not perfect though, the middle does drag a little and some of the returning characters feel just a bit excessive to me, but it’s a thrilling ride that if you haven’t had a chance to snag, when it publishes in February go seek it out.  8/10.