I am a huge fan of Brandon Sanderson’s novels. I really should post more reviews of them, but when I first started reading his work, they were considered adult fantasy fiction. This was because the main characters were adults. Now, most of his novels have teen main characters and fit the young adult rules. Whatever. The main thing is that he is a very clean writer that you can trust to write something good for yourself or your child.
When my dad’s bought me a hardback version of this novel and had it signed by Brandon Sanderson at a Comic Con, I squealed like a little girl. The hardback edition of this novel is gorgeous! I love the color illustrations, the beautiful flourishes, the font, and the lovely bedsheets. It’s one of the most beautiful books I have seen and I have worked a professional graphic designer for over twenty years.
Tress of The Emerald Sea would be a stand-alone novel except that all his novels take place in the same universe, Cosmere. Even so, if you have never read a novel by Brandon Sanderson you can pick this one up and completely enjoy it. All the rules of his world and magic system is in this tale.
The story starts out with an ordinary sort of girl, Tress, who falls in love with the duke’s son. When they start realize that their relationship is more the friendship, the duke that’s his son away from the island they live on to get him married. Well, he ends up a prisoner to a socerous. Tress then decides to leave her island to rescue her love.
I really enjoyed the fairytale aspect of this novel. From a talking rat, pirates, bewitched powerful beings, and a poisoned sea, this has much to keep you turning the pages. According to the author, he wanted a story kind of like “Princess Bride” except with Buttercup going after Wesley.
Even though I thoroughly recommend this book and enjoy it, I do find Sanderson’s version of fantasy more like Science Fiction than true folklore. His novels each have a unique magical system that the main character has to learn to finish their quest. So this has his magic really being a kind of science. In fairytales and folklore, magic stays mysterious. Impossible things just happen because certain characters, almost never the main character, are magical. It isn’t any sort of rule that fantasy has to be written one way or another, but it’s just an observation. Tolkien snd C.S.Lewis style of fantasy were more like folklore and fairytales.
Even so, Tress of the Emerald Sea is an excellent novel that I recommend to all readers of that size book. It is very clean, very sweet, and full of good virtue with humor mixed in.
Lara's Wanderings 