REVIEW: YUMI AND THE NIGHTMARE PAINTER (SECRET PROJECT #3)

The art of love and the love of art...

After being impressed with the Dragonsteel edition of TRESS OF THE EMERALD SEA, I'd been eyeing the other two secret projects that are set within The Cosmere. When the fan boxes returned for them on their website, I scooped them up without hesitation this time and have been looking forward to diving in ever since. 

HOW I RATED IT 

5/5 This is not necessarily a perfect book nor is it even some of Sanderson's best work. With that said, I just had an absolutely amazing reading experience, thanks in part to this beautiful Dragonsteel edition of the novel. 

CHARACTERS

This is probably one of Sanderson's smaller casts of characters, at least when it comes to the figures who play an important role in the storyline. The book stars two young heroes and switches back and forth between their perspectives. Yumi is a young yoki-hijo who was selected at birth to serve the people of her land as a holy woman who communes with the spirits. She does this through an artistic stacking of stones in which she makes impressively high towers of interesting shapes out of common rocks until her work draws the attention of spirits of the planet who she then persuades to turn into things that the people need to survive. Nikaro, or Painter, is our second protagonist. He lives in a world that is quite different from Yumi's, but holds a job that is just as essential to the survival of his people, though it is much less celebrated. He tracks down living nightmares who come out to feed upon the essences of people and paints them as something harmless so that they are dismissed back into the dark place from which they came. I really liked how different each of their fictitious jobs were, but how they tied thematically together in that they both involved art in some form and were both essential to the worlds in which they live. Their interactions together were also quite fun when their paths mysteriously collide and they end up visiting each others world in the other person's body. The relationship sort of follows a bit of the "enemies to lovers" trope, though they're not so much actual enemies as much as they are people who just really get on each others' nerves. Painter is a moody, broody boy who's been disillusioned by something in his past which affects his behavior in the present. Yumi is fully engrossed in her own job and is the very picture of propriety, though she longs to indulge in the simple pleasures of a normal person's life. For probably at least half the story, their relationship feels like a pretty standard anime romance where they drive each other crazy but you just know that they're going to end up being an item by the end. Toward the latter half of the story though, their relationship develops into something far more interesting as some twists reveal who each of them really are as people and their dynamics with the more minor characters in the story evolve as well. 

As a quick note on the supporting cast, most of them fit quite comfortably into familiar anime architypes. This wasn't really a problem for me, if anything I kind of enjoyed seeing Sanderson's take on them, but I think it'd be understandable if readers didn't connect with these personalities quite as much as they do with minor character in his other books. There are also some fun little connections to the greater Cosmere to be found amid these secondary characters, not least of which is that this story is told to us by Hoid himself. 

PLOT/TONE

With this story being relayed to readers by the cheeky Worldhopper, Hoid, there are some sillier overtones to this one, though it's not quite as tongue-in-cheek as TRESS OF THE EMERALD SEA was. Although many fans of Sanderson, myself included, would love to see some of his flagship series like MISTBORN or THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE adapted into an anime of some kind, I never thought I'd read something by him that was so deliberately inspired by anime and anime-adjacent media. I imagine this is not going to be for everyone, but the overall vibe of this worked quite well for me. I enjoyed the juxtaposition between the two different worlds that Yumi and Painter come from as well as the stark contrast between their personalities and overall lifestyles. Yes, this one has a far more cartoony feeling to it than most everything else he's ever done, but I think that just kind of worked in this case. The settings are fairly bizarre and the lives people live in them are equally so. I was hardly surprised to find that one of Sanderson's inspirations for this story was FINAL FANTASY X and because that is my favorite game in that franchise, I'm also not surprised that this story really sucked me in. While Sanderson usually has some components of romance scattered into his other stories, it is rarely such a central focus of the narrative. Yes, Yumi and Painter do have a mission that they are trying to piece together and complete, but much of the time is spent on just building out their dynamics as they learn more about one another and come to more of an understanding. Is this the most profound love story to ever be told in fantasy? No, certainly not. If anything, it's a fairly run-of-the-mill execution in regard to the media that inspired it, but I still had a fun time with it and it is done well enough where I found myself getting pretty emotional about it toward the end of the book. I do think that the plot itself meanders a bit for at least half the novel because of the more interpersonal focus, but things get really interesting in the latter sections. In typical "Sanderlanche" fashion the last third of it gets absolutely crazy with some twists that I was expecting and some that I definitely was not. I did find myself getting a little annoyed at some of the pauses in this momentum that Sanderson/Hoid took to explain exactly what was going on. It felt like the book was sort of directly speaking to the portion of the fanbase that has questions about the plausibility of every little detail, but as someone who's a little more willing to just roll with the punches, I felt like these bits of exposition were just a speedbump to my enjoyment of the more intense parts. 

SETTING/WORLD

Though I wouldn't quite call this a "portal fantasy" there are two pretty distinct fantasy worlds that we get to explore here. Yumi's world is scorching hot and lit by a bright, reddish sun. The ground is so steamy that her and her people have to wear thick, wooden clogs in order to keep their feet from being burned and there are hot air currents that can cause the floating plants to drift away if they are not chained down to the ground. People persuade spirits to convert into things like levitation devices for their homes or gardens and there are cold springs instead of hot springs in which people can bathe. It's a fairly traditional world filled with religious shrines and some strict rules for Yumi's day-to-day. Painter's home, by contrast, is much more modern and informal. It is also covered by a dark essence known as "The Shroud" which effectively blocks out all light, except for that of a single star which is largely believed to be a neighboring planet. Neon lines of magenta and blue offer light and power to Painter's people and seem to be the only thing that staves off the darkness. The way in which these two settings are connected and the method by which Yumi and Painter are able to visit one another's homes remains a mystery for much of the story though things are all thoroughly explained by the end. There are also some very fun and somewhat startling twists when it comes to how their worlds are intertwined and what each of the heroes must do to set things right. At this point, interesting worlds are just sort of a given when it comes to a Cosmere novel and these locales did not disappoint in that regard. It was also a ton of fun to bounce between two different settings since we typically stick to one and don't always get to explore that in full. Despite the duality of the story's backdrop, things are actually fairly intimate. Neither Painter nor Yumi's homes are especially large geographically, which gave the story a sort of closed-in feeling that I quite enjoyed. I don't know if Sanderson will ever revisit this corner of The Cosmere, but I hope we'll get to see more of it at some point or another. 

HARDCOVER 

This might very well be one of the most incredible books I have in my collection and this is coming from someone who owns a nice box set of THE HOBBIT AND THE LORD OF THE RINGS as well as some nice Kickstarter editions and other SECRET PROJECTS books from Dragonsteel (though I have not splurged for any of Sanderson's leatherbounds). Not only is the cover strikingly beautiful, but the art direction for the interior of the book absolutely blew me away. There are a staggering number of full color illustrations, many of which span two pages, and all of which are rendered in breathtaking detail. There are also a number of floating illustrations which are sometimes sprinkled in between the larger spreads and those are quite gorgeous as well. Even chapter headings and initials are embellished with beautiful details which give the book a ton of character. If I'm being 100% objective, the story being told here is probably closer to what I would typically rate as a 4/5, but this Dragonsteel hardcover edition elevated my entire experience with how magnificient it is and how nicely the absurd number of illustrations are distributed across the pages. 

CONCLUSION

This is the closest a book has ever come to recreating the magic I experienced when playing FINAL FANTASY X. It's staying so in-line with the expectations/conventions associated with this type of story may turn some readers off, but fun Sanderson twists and Cosmere connections ultimately made this feel like something special and worthwhile to me. 

(+) Yumi and Painter serve as compelling protagonists who get more interesting as the story goes on.

(+) Two strangely fascinating fantasy settings which are explored

(+) The concept of art and artistic expression made for some awesome thematic moments

(+) A competently told romance story that ended up affecting me much more than I thought it would 

(+) Deeply satisfying twists and turns that reframed large portions of the story

(+) Quirky side characters, some of whom have connections to the broader Cosmere

(+) This Dragonsteel edition is the most beautiful book I've ever read/owned and is so good it elevated my entire reading experience

( ) The archetypal nature of this novel may not be to everyone's tastes

(-) The first half of the book plays out a little slowly though there are still some interesting hooks that kept me going 

(-) Some over-explaining of the twists revealed near the story's end