I bought this as a separate book as I only realized afterwards that it would have been a part of Arcanum Unbounded. My expectations might have been influenced by seeing the almost 300-page book stand on its own, leading to me assuming a sort of proper entry to the Stormlight Archive with only a limited scope in terms of its singular perspective, but upon opening it and seeing the massive font along with the prologue being the same chapter from Words of Radiance, which literally took almost 20% of the pages, I realized that those had to be readjusted to more of a 100-page novella. It was good as such but perhaps a little less grand than I had originally imagined based on the packaging.

In the included postscript, Brandon Sanderson explains the purpose of the novella as mostly just patching up some continuity issues in the main series in a manner, which I thought potentially even a little spoilery but luckily that was quite vague and, by the mere existence of the novella in the first place, relatively obvious. That being said, it also felt a little bit like that in terms of the plot, story and character development. The worldbuilding continues to be fascinating and I enjoyed the subtle ways in which the ways of the Tashikk people both poke fun at but also highlight the point of bureaucracy, but it did feel a bit more like filling gaps than what I have read before.

The contrast between the bureaucratic Tashikk people and the very young main character’s straightforward, somewhat “crass” (which is a new word I learned while reading) personality created a lot of fun comedy with me constantly chuckling at her perhaps somewhat more unconventional takes on, for example, the magic of the world. It was a very entertaining and perhaps one of the funniest reading experiences as a whole in the Cosmere for me thus far and obviously mandatory for everyone reading the Stormlight Archive. Just make sure to calibrate your expectations to what really amounts to a short story on the Brandon Sanderson scale.