The most successful kickstarter ever delivers again!
I mostly knew Sanderson by rumor when I pledged to his insanely successful kickstarter. I had read the first Skyward book and was working on the first in the Mistborn series, and figured getting four mysterious ebooks over the course of a year sounded like a very fun thing to be a part of. And it has been!
Tress and The Emerald Sea was an excellent start and set the bar very high. You can read my full review here, but in short: I loved it.
The second book, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, was—in comparison—a bit of a let down. Though it’s a great book, it just didn’t grab me like Tress and her adventures did. Naturally, I was very excited to see what book 3 would be. Would it live up to the first? Or perhaps been even more of a miss then the second?
Straight out of the gate, just judging by the title alone, I was intrigued. Yumi and The Nightmare Painter sounds like one hell of a fantasy novel. And it is!
The story follows—as you can probably guess—Yumi, and a Nightmare Painter. His name is Nikaro, but for most of the book he’s just referred to as Painter.
Yumi and Painter come from entirely different backgrounds, different worlds actually, but through strange circumstances their lives become woven together and an adventure unfolds. At first, this adventure focuses on finding out why their lives are interlinked in the first place, but after a while it delves deeper. Why is Painter’s world shrouded in darkness and full of nightmares? And why is Yumi’s so rigid, governed strictly by rules and rituals?
You’ll have to read it yourself to find out.
Sanderson’s a master of world building, and it was mostly that that pulled me in. At the start of the book I didn’t really care about what was happening to Yumi and Painter, I just wanted to live in their worlds! They’re both incredibly detailed and expertly crafted, and I enjoyed every single sentence that painted another part of them.
Eventually though, the story pulled me in. Of course it did. And by the end I sat there, mouth agape, in awe of how it all unfolded.
So I’m happy to say that this book hit the spot, and landed itself right at the top. I’m not sure if I can pick a favorite between this one and Tress and the Emerald Sea, but if not, they’re worthy equals.
Now, I’m just waiting for the fourth and final book, hoping that it will be just as good as the first and third.
Did you pledge to the kickstarter or have you read any of these books by themselves? Let me know in the comments! If you’re going through all of them like me, I’d love to hear what you think.
Oh, and as always, if you’re into stories, I’d love it if you checked out my books!
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Trey Stone, Author 