Book Review: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

Book #91 of 2023:

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

[Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.]

The latest Kickstarter novel from author Brandon Sanderson falls somewhere between the last two in quality for me. I don’t think it’s as strong a story as Tress of the Emerald Sea — nor that it would work as well for readers unfamiliar with recent cosmere developments / revelations of ‘realmatic theory’ in the Stormlight Archive and such — but it improves as it goes along and is substantially better throughout than The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England. I’ll give it 3.5 stars, rounded up.

Like Tress, this is a tale in the writer’s broad cosmere continuity conveyed to us by that rascal Hoid, an unreliable narrator and minor character in the present affair. Mostly the plot follows the two title figures, whose lonely souls somehow become entwined despite their living on apparently separate worlds. Yumi is a sheltered priestess of sorts whose position is exalted yet grants her no real control over anything in her life; the painter is an underpaid service worker who patrols the streets to guard against supernatural threats. Their respective magics seem unremarkable to each yet fairly wondrous to the other, and after their lives come crashing together, they learn to appreciate both whilst unraveling the mystery of their connection — which finds them taking turns being relegated to a ghostly presence no one else can see while the other one occupies their normal physical space.

As usual for Sanderson, there are some eventual twist reveals concerning the underlying worldbuilding and rules to the magical systems, but he also finds time to focus on mental health issues like executive dysfunction and ruminate in not-too-subtle subtext on certain contemporary concerns about artificial intelligence (aka, how art created by humans is more meaningful than anything formed by mindless machinery, precisely because people invest it with meaning). This isn’t the deepest of the writer’s own creations, but there’s an interesting pan-Asian feel to the narrative in the form of hot springs, chopsticks, ramen shops, and so on, and he acknowledges several manga and JRPG titles as among his influences in an afterword.

Because this is all being told to us by an in-universe character prone to embellishment if not outright dishonesty, it comes — again, like Tress of the Emerald Sea — with a notable asterisk for whether the events of this story can be accepted at face-value as canonical. At a minimum, it doesn’t seem like anything here will wind up important to the broader cosmere saga, but if you’re a fan of Hoid and his Cryptic associate Design, this is a fun side adventure in which they play a supporting role to the slow-building romance between the titular star-crossed couple.

[Content warning for those romantic interests pretending to be siblings at one point.]

★★★★☆

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