Tress of the Emerald Sea is a fun, quotable and theoretically very surprising fantasy adventure with various twists and trope inversions, which does, however, often signal its direction so clearly that these are less revelations and more satisfying payoffs to what still feel like clever predictions.

This is once again not necessarily suitable to people with no prior exposure to the Cosmere, mainly due to who the narrator is, but maybe to a lesser degree than Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. The most explicit references I found to be to Elantris, which I discovered already on the first page of its prologue after now picking it up right after this. It might still work but you would certainly miss a lot of its kind of within-fandom inside humor, some of which was genuinely great and some of which was, well, expected - naturally.

Now, the beautifully deadly non-liquid spore oceans are an absolutely amazing world building element that had me on the edge of my seat multiple times. This accompanied with twelve moons with waterfalls of spores down to the twelve different seas paints a truly fantastic landscape, which is once again exceptionally well integrated into the story. The characters are likeable and not and the themes of genuineness, determination, persistence, collaboration and redemption are beautifully handled in a way in which they are very much unmistakably explicit but still told in a way where they just make up the story rather than present an agenda of moral takeaways. It is highly unusual that, particularly a fantasy story’s climax essentially has the main character not really do anything but ask for help as her one greatest, character-defining, absolutely pivotal decision, after which the story pretty much concludes by her simply receiving it due to the loyalty she cultivated in the people around her on the way up to that point, but it works flawlessly.

Tress of the Emerald Sea is a great feel good adventure with relatively little (actualized) violence for its genre but at times even more tension. It is a perfect encapsulation of the idea of You Only Live Once in a beautifully dangerous but gorgeous world featuring fun characters, though some might be a bit forgettable - particularly due to certain narrative choices. One of my favorite parts of these Brandon Sanderson’s secret projects is his reflection on his inspirations at the end of each of them, which, once noticed for the first time, cannot be unnoticed later particularly for this book. To fully understand it, you’ll have to get acquitted with the some of the prior Cosmere books but that you should do regardless. Warm recommendation!