Brandon Sanderson released all 4 of his much talked about secret projects this year. Naturally I read all of them. I should say up front that I didn’t participate in the record breaking kick starter but bought them on my Kindle. I mean you only had to wait ten days after the release and for once I exercised some book patience!
Although spoiler alert two of them I liked so much I wish I had the special editions!
So from bottom to top here’s my rank of the Sanderson Special Projects:
The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook comes in at a solid 3 out of 5.
It’s my least favorite (and also the one I remember the details of least) but still enjoyable. This gave me such strong 90’s action movie vibes. I can imagine Bruce Willis playing the role back in the day. But also like modern Marvel where the humor is iffy and then just becomes too much.
The MC lands in medieval England (possibly) with amnesia but things immediately seem haywire and it unravels from there. This one seems almost like an interesting writing exercise for Sanderson, that doesn’t really come together, but is still fun enough. Like a popcorn movie.
3/5
The Sunlit Man comes in at 3.75 out of 5.
This is the one that contains spoilers for the first Mistborn Trilogy. Which I haven’t finished. But I have to say I enjoyed this enough that it makes me want to finally finish!
This is about a guy who’s being chased and lands on a planet where the sun burns everything up each rotation and the people are just fighting to stay alive. Again you got to give Sanderson credit for his interesting world-building.
Plus it’s so cinematic! I mean all of these books would be so easy to film. Try something a little different Hollywood!
I will say on this one, and I’m trying to be vague, there’s this one way of talking one of the characters has that annoys me. Not enough to kill the book obviously but it was so unnecessary and I wish it had been edited. Perhaps though it would have hit harder if I did have the context of the end of Mistborn. We shall see. 🙂 I mean probably if I ever unpack and find it now that I moved.
- Some of the other books have a Mistborn character that appears so that could definitely be considered a spoiler. Sunlit Man, however, is the one that gets into more details about the end of the first trilogy.
Now the last two are definite wins for me. Probably on my top ten of the year list!
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter gets a 4.75. Possibly a 5.
I was going into this unspoiled when I saw a YouTuber call it Sanderson writes a romance and I was worried. But I loved it. It’s about Painter- who lives in a city where Nightmares are dangerous and real so he paints them into something more palatable. One night his body/soul is shot into that of Yumi a young woman in another world (maybe) who lives an incredibly regimented life in which she asks spirits for help.
They must try to live with each other (literally) while figuring out what is happening to them.
One thing that worried me but wound up impressing me here a body swap under a time limit how will we ever believe the relationship?
The ending was fascinating and not at all what I thought it would be. On that point though I think he may have cheaped out on a stronger ending but I get why it happened… yeah it’s really hard to talk about the ending without spoilers. So I’ll just say a different ending could have been stronger but I get it and loved the book regardless.
I also love this cover!
So in the end my favorite was the first:
Tress of the Emerald Sea is a solid 5 star for me!
It’s a Princess Bride inspired tale about a young girl who leaves her solitary island to take to the seas and save the love of her life. I thought Tress was a great character. I loved how the story unfolding and she came about to take charge of rescuing her love. There’s a lot of fun stuff in here. (And I happen to love pirates so that didn’t hurt!)
But really it was the world that stuck with me. The spore seas and the unfolding scientific explanation of them. Also the one spore in particular that would grow when wet so you couldn’t even ingest them or inhale them. Yeah my allergies would likely literally be the death of me.
Anyway it’s great fun. Great main characters. Found family. Pirates. Spore seas. Another wild, wild world of the Cosmere.
5 star.
Overall it was an interesting reading year. I think Brandon Sanderson really took chances and experimented with these books and I can appreciate that he has the ability to do that. There’s a lot of different topics that come up that I could tell really held interest to him, like the ideas of art and artistic natures in Yumi…
I’ve always liked his books (some of them are just so, so big!) And seriously Hollywood there are stories right here! You desperately need some good ones 🙂 And we certainly know he’s prolific.