Tress of the Emerald Sea Review: Brandon Sanderson’s Most Well-Written Book.

The first of Sanderson’s four 2023 “secret projects” is a charming, Princess Bride-esque adventure with a very interesting narrator.

Tress of the Emerald Sea is the first “secret novel” out of four (all of which will be out this year) from Brandon Sanderson’s highly successful Kickstarter from last year. When I heard about this, I knew that I didn’t want to read anything about the novels and instead I wanted to just jump straight in without any expectations whatsoever. And I’m so glad I did that for this book.

What is this book about?

Tress of the Emerald Sea is about Tress, an ordinary girl living in planet with twelve moons that hang oppressively close to the surface of the planet. The moons contain entities called “aether” that produce different types of spores that rain down from the moons to the planet’s surface. It’s a very interesting setting, even by Brandon’s standard.

The story is about Tress’ journey as she traveled the world to rescue the person she loved, Charlie, after he was kidnapped by the evil Sorceress. It’s rather straightforward, especially compared to the plot of Sanderson’s thicker tomes. But the thing that pulled me in wasn’t the plot, but it was…

The Narrator.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Hoid is the narrator of this entire book. But not only that, while his roles in other Sanderson’s books tend to be small and merely a cameo, on this book he’s an important character.

But let’s back it up a bit, who is Hoid? For those of you unfamiliar with the Cosmere (Sanderson’s own literary version of the MCU), Hoid is the character that appears in every single Cosmere story. His backstory is mostly unrevealed, and nobody knows the full extent of what he can and can’t do (other than the fact that he’s lived long enough to be in every Cosmere story), or even what he really wants, but he’s affected major events in the Cosmere both in small and major ways.

But even if you don’t know about all of that, and this is your first time meeting this strange character, I don’t think that’s a really big deal because he’s just such a charming character.

One of Hoid’s most recognizable trait is that he loves stories. He’s a storyteller at his core. Throughout his appearances in the Cosmere, the most memorable ones to me are when he tells a story (“Wandersail” and “The Girl Who Looked Up” are my two favorite Hoid moments). Which brings me to my next point…

The Narration

The book is told using Hoid’s first person omniscient point of view, but it mostly follows Tress, not Hoid. This in itself already creates an interesting thing where even though we follow Tress’ thoughts through Hoid’s voice, sometimes Hoid’s own thoughts also breaks in. And when Hoid himself appears in the story, the narration just effortlessly switches to his point of view, it’s something I’ve never really seen in a fantasy book before.

Hoid’s voice is just simply more interesting than the average Sanderson narration. He actually uses wordplay somewhat often, which is not something Sanderson does a lot. The narration also provided a lot of really interesting observations and insights that wouldn’t be there if this was told using Tress’ voice.

A lot of the observations that Hoid pointed out are deconstructions of common tropes in stories such as this. And I think that is something that you can’t really put in a Brandon Sanderson book if it wasn’t narrated by Hoid. It would sound out of place and forced, but with Hoid, it’s just fitting.

Basically, Sanderson’s prose is normally focused on delivering the story without calling attention to itself, but Hoid is a showman, he makes jokes and observations that pull the reader slightly away from the story being told, but it adds character and charm to the story.

This is also true for the plot itself. There are certain chapters where it didn’t really move the story forward much, but they add some depth to the characters or the world. And that’s not something you usually see in a Sanderson book. And I think this is a welcome change.

Another thing I found to be interesting is the fact that Hoid often makes references to things that are… high tech, in a way that doesn’t exist yet in other Cosmere stories, and I think that’s a really interesting way to worldbuild without being relying on info-dumps (which this book had a lot of, but I had no problems with because of Hoid’s voice).

So, in short, Brandon-as-Hoid is just a better storyteller than Brandon Sanderson.

Okay, that’s quite a lot about the narration and Hoid, but what about the story itself?

The Story Itself

In many ways, this book is about contradictions. The narration itself explicitly stated this multiple times, and it showed that through Tress’ journey from being an unassuming pragmatic girl into being someone who would have to do things she’d never thought she would ever do. And yet, even as she did those things, that unassuming, pragmatic part of her was still there.

Like I said before, the story itself isn’t actually that complicated. It’s very straightforward, but still with the normal Sandersonian foreshadowings that make the story all the more satisfying to read (mostly) from start to finish.

The only problem I had with the story is near the very end, at the climax. Some of the mechanics of what was going on just went over my head. I think that might be intentional — considering the characters involved — , but still, it bothered me because Sanderson’s endings are usually flawless, but not this one.

I think there might be some Cosmere-related stuff happening near the end that I just didn’t get, which is why some parts of it fell flat for me. And that brings me to my next point…

Can I read this without reading the rest of the Cosmere? (and conclusion)

I really want to recommend this book for people who have never read the Cosmere before, but Hoid kept making Cosmere references, and one (maybe more, one is just what I caught) that is a full on spoiler of a major series, so I’m a bit hesitant about that.

I think it would be fine if you read this book as your first Sanderson book, just know that you would just get slightly confused at some points (including the ending), and you will get spoiled a bit of detail of one of Brandon’s series, but you might not even realize that anyway.

Honestly, despite all of that, I still really recommend this book, especially for Cosmere fans who are a bit tired of all the convoluted and dry Cosmere entries. This book is just straightforward and charming and if your taste in characters is similar to mine, the narrator is also super interesting. 4/5.

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