#1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson expands his Cosmere universe shared by The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn with a new standalone novel for everyone who loved The Princess Bride.
The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?
Brandon Sanderson is one of the most prominent and beloved fantasy authors currently writing right now. In fact, in many comment sections I lurk in on the internet, many predict that he will end up finishing the Winds of Winter series when George RR Martin inevitably will not. (Maybe he’ll even fill in for Patrick Rothfuss to finally finish his Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy? All I know is I’m not reading the second book of that until the third has an actual release date and after reading the first book 10 years ago I am starting to lose hope.) Despite how popular he is, this is my first book of his! I ignored the internet’s many charts on where to start in his Cosmere universe to best understand all of the Easter eggs and what the hell is going on for one main reason: I love The Princess Bride, both the movie and the book, so I wanted to see how this lived up to that. I kind of wish I hadn’t known that The Princess Bride inspired this and that it wasn’t continually compared to it, but I did and it is, and it definitely effected the way I read Tress of the Emerald Sea. Which is a shame, because in my very biased opinions, it didn’t live up to the magic of The Princess Bride, but that’s a very lofty story to live up to. On it’s own, I did definitely enjoy Tress, but there were some things about it that kept me from loving it.
Again, this is my first Sanderson book, so take it with a grain of salt when I felt like some of the story elements were just kind of confusing. I did completely love Tress’ world where instead of sailing on seas of water, we’re journeying on a sea of spores with their own attributes that gives pirating its own unique challenges. But there were also characters we met that were from different worlds–maybe from another book? I wouldn’t know–and of that all felt a little out of left field at times, especially when it came to how those characters came together in the the ending, which I felt was a bit rushed.
For some reason I was expecting this book to be a slower, cozy fantasy, but there was a really good amount of action that kept me interested. There were quite a few things I didn’t see coming, and each twist showed the reader a new aspect of the fantasy world or how the spores work in a deeper way. Sometimes I did feel like a lot of the plot points were just resolved too easily and it made the book read more like a young adult book. Not that there’s anything wrong with young adult books, but when the stakes often felt so high with pirates and death looming over the characters, it made the conflicts feel less and less serious as the book went on. I would say it gave the book a more immature vibe.
I liked the worldbuilding and characterization a lot, and it definitely makes me want to try another Sanderson book sometime. But I will say that the sense of humor from the narrator felt immature to me at times and a little cringe. Like it was just trying too hard to be random and funny instead of just letting the humor come through naturally in the story. Despite a few issues I had with it, Tress made me interested in reading more of Sanderson’s other works. Overall, this was a fun time, and I thought I was rating it 4 stars…but the more I think about it, the lower my rating drops. I’d recommend it to fans of pirate fantasies and maybe readers bridging the gap between young adult and adult books.
★★★⯪
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