So far this May, I’ve been alternating between my regularly scheduled posts (see last week’s review of BRZRKR Bloodlines Volume 1), and #WyrdAndWonder themed topics as well. Today, the two are happily combined, as the book I was planning to review anyway — Brandon Sanderson’s Tress of the Emerald Sea — fits perfectly with the day’s prompt: Fantastic Voyages.

If you’re unsure what I mean by #WyrdAndWonder, I’ve given a brief explanation in my last themed post on Day 4 – Five Fantasy Favorites: Creatures from Nautical Myth and Folklore, but it’s essentially a month long celebration of the Fantastic, whether it be books, movies, art, or whatever else. And if you’re interested in participating, or just really want ALL the details, please see the Chart a Course for Wyrd And Wonder post over on Onemore.org.

In any case, it feels like I’m about a solid two years late to reading Tress, but I actually think that may have been helpful to my enjoyment of the book, rather than a hinderance. Last I had read anything by Brandon Sanderson, I had just finished up The Lost Metal and was, in a way, grieving the end of an era.

In that review, I mention how The Lost Metal kinda cracks open the Cosmere in a way we really haven’t seen yet, and one of the big ways it does so is the introduction of Aethers. Mostly, we’re still firmly in Allomancy country, but I believe the little bit of Aether magic we do see was meant to somehow prepare us for the world of Tress. I almost feel like Sanderson may have got it wrong, and I wished I would have read Tress first, as it would have made so much of Lost Metal make a bit more sense. However, from reading this book’s afterword and just generally following the press around The Secret Projects, I kinda get the impression Tress was kinda an accident, and so perhaps a little slack is warranted . . . also I just don’t know how you’d ever manage to reveal things in the correct order in a series as long as the Cosmere.

However it could have happened, or should have happened, Tress ended up being a really enjoyable read for me, though one that sort of grew on me (not unlike a verdant vine) slowly.

The first big pill to swallow is the setting, and this one goes down pretty easy. A sea of spores (green, crimson and midnight), fluidization, giant ship-breaking vines and crystals, some absurd number of moons . . . Sanderson really feels like he’s batting for the fences on this world and letting his imagination run wild. And the results are stunning. There were several points during the novel which I had to let myself pause and just really try to imagine what things must have looked like. I was in awe every time. And I felt like this visual quality really was enhanced by the leatherbound edition I was reading which is just stunning as well.

I’d say the next really noticeable thing we come up against is Tress’s narrator, the (by now) infamous Hoid. This aspect of the novel didn’t thrill me at first. I’m usually a big fan of witty narrators, but for some reason I didn’t take to Hoid immediately. Though Sanderson’s love of Terry Pratchett is well documented — he once wrote that Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Might be the Highest Form of Literature on the Planet — Tress was the first novel I’ve read from Sanderson where I felt Pratchett’s influence at the level of prose.

Note: I have a whole lot more to say about Pratchett’s influence on the Mistborn books, specifically Wax and Wayne, but that has become a bit of a project. I’ll update this post here if I ever write it up.

It’s felt mostly through Hoid being clever and saying things like:

“It might be said that he had a way with words. In that his words often got away.” pg 13.

To me, this actually is a funny and clever line; however, it’s quickly followed by another, and then another, and so on for pretty much the entirety of the book. And while individual jokes and quips may have been enjoyable, its pervasiveness throughout the story felt wholly unnecessary. Simply put, Tress’s story is interesting enough without all the ornamentation.

We’re only on page eight when one of the more awkward attempts at wit is made, in a description of the main character no less. Take the following lines:

“In short, Tress was a normal teenage girl. She knew this because the other girls often mentioned how they weren’t like ‘everyone else’, and after a while Tress figured that the group ‘everyone else’ must include only her. The other girls were obviously right, as they all knew how to be unique — they were so good at it, in fact, that they did it together”

I’ve written about Sanderson’s use — and attempts at recompense for using — the Not Like Other Girls trope on this blog before, most notably in my review of The Bands of Mourning (Deep or Dated). Now, I say this with the complete bias of a white man in his mid-thirties:

Leave. It. Alone.

Want to write a story about a humble unassuming girl who goes on a big grandiose adventure which flies in the face of genre convention in regards to gender norms? Great! Tell that story. Tress is the perfect opportunity. As the Nike slogan goes: Just Do It!

But calling attention to it through one of Hoid’s only moderately humorous asides only lessens its power.

Now astute readers might have noticed that I said Hoid’s narration didn’t thrill me at first, but eventually it did grow on me, and by the end I was happy I stuck it through. Ironically, it’s because Hoid (as narrator) also has a bit of an arc as the story progresses, growing more introspective as the story nears its end. This allows for some of the more interesting lines in the book, the first being:

“The ship fell quiet — but it wasn’t the quiet of a night of falling snow. It was the quiet of a hospital room after a loved one has died.” – pg 364

Now I’m not sure about the second sentence, but it’s the “. . . a night of falling snow.” that had my antennae twitching. I assume this is in reference to the event Sanderson writes about in his April 4th, 2023 blog post Outside.

I found this interesting because I’d always assumed that post had gone up as a response to the “hit piece” from WIRED magazine entitled Brandon Sanderson is Your God which posted on March 23, 2023. Now I’m sure that piece influenced Outside‘s final form (he makes references to misconceptions by journalists in the post), but given Tress‘s copyright date of January 2023, it seems Sanderson had been thinking more about the event for other reasons as well.

The next line that really stuck out to me comes when Tress is captured and about to be bargained away to the dragon Xisis (yup there be dragons here too). The line says:

“Could a day have too many moments? Yes, the hours and minutes had been the same today as every day, but each of the moments inside had been fat, like a wineskin filled to bursting. Tress felt as if she were going to leak it all out, vomit emotion all over the place — there wasn’t enough Tress to contain it.” – pg 368

This stood out to me as just being so prescient, both back while it was written during the pandemic, and also every day we’ve managed to endure post-pandemic. Big moods here.

Finally, I’ll bring up the dragon again, Xisis. I really enjoyed this scene as it felt — despite not being all that similar in the specifics — like something you might have found in The Hobbit. I think Tress has been, and will be, a lot of burgeoning readers’ first experience with Fantasy (and especially Cozy Fantasy), so the scene just felt right in that context, whether it was meant as an homage or not (I don’t really have any evidence to prove either way).

So Give ‘Tress of the Emerald Sea‘ a read?

Yes! Despite my annoyance with Hoid’s narration, Tress of the Emerald Sea is still a fantastic voyage (ayy now were back on theme), and generally a joy to read. As Cosmere books go, I would say it’s THEE starting point for Aether magic (despite seeing Aethers in other books), and has (probably) a lot of other implications for the interconnected story of the world hoppers (there are several in this book).

I especially recommend this one to first-time Fantasy readers because of the real sense of wonder to be held imagining the (colorful) world, and the sense of (high-seas) adventure taking place despite its non-traditional ocean. For long-time Fantasy readers, there’s a lot here you’ll recognize from other beloved Fantasies, and that is often its own reason to read!

That’s all I have for this time. What are your thoughts? Would you be able to stand an entire novel narrated by Stormlight’s Wit? What do you make of the book’s connection to Outside?
Which Cosmere books are your favorite?

Please leave your thoughts in the comments and thanks for reading (this was a long one). I look forward to talking about this one!

Happy #WyrdAndWonder!