I loved Tress of the Emerald Sea. I read it as a newcomer to the Cosmere and it absolutely hooked me.

It’s my birthday today and can’t think of a better present than a Tress of the Emerald Sea review! I’m guessing the next read will (hopefully) be Warbreaker. My favorite of the secret projects was the sunlit man because of the deep cosmere connections and because I was reintroduced to a character I already really liked and throughout the book having him grow on me even more he is now probably in my top five cosmere characters after Kaladin, Hoid, Marsh, and Lightsong.

Tress is such a great book :) I love it so much. Minor spoilery comments I don’t think the Sorceress using Lightweaving should be taken as a Roshar thing. In Elantris, Raoden also manages to create illusions. Hoid also uses a Yolish form of Lightweaving. So basically, terms like “Lightweaving” and “Awakening” are terms that get generalized in the Cosmere. Ulaam is actually not in The Lost Metal, although MeLaan does mention him! You’re thinking of VenDell, who wants people’s bones. Ulaam seems to be interested in other body parts as well. Kandra appear to have different interests. Also, about the Death/Marsh reference, this is mentioned in the Arc Arcanum of The Lost Metal!

I finished Wheel of Time in 2023 and Towers of Midnight SOLD me on Brandon Sanderson. So I got into him right at the beginning of the year of Sanderson. I read Frugal Wizard first and I really enjoyed it (totally my sense of humor, easy read) because I was scared of the Cosmere. I then read this next because of my deep lifelong love of The Princess Bride and I was SOLD. I immediately dove into Stormlight. I’m loving it. I absolutely fell in love with this book, just as I did the Princess Bride as a child.

The Reckoners trilogy were the first Sanderson books I read but Tress was the first Cosmere book that I read and it was such a fantastic introduction and I was amazed to realize that Steelheart was considered one of his less popular books, and that he had several others that were 10x better and 10x longer than Steelheart. I'm about halfway through Words of Radiance right now and couldn't be happier! And it's all thanks to Tress. Solid 9.5/10 for me. (Spoilers) I'm extremely hopeful that we get more stories set on Lumar and/or more information about the Seethe and the spores and the aethers, and how they're starting to be incorporated into the rest of the Cosmere based on what we've seen from SP5.

Glad you guys enjoyed it so much. Didn’t work for me (the plot not the tone) but I’m excited to read the rest of his secret projects.

For me Tress is my favorite Sanderson book so far. I'm not saying it's his BEST book, but for me it's a special gem. As a cold rating, I'd give it a final score of 9.1

Yumi next please. I did not expect to like it as much as tress, but I was happily surprised 😊

46:22 I get what you're saying, but I disagree. Overcoming/silencing your fear of a thing that has existed as an abject terror your whole life isn't "easy," rather it is Tress' "special ability". On the engineering side, I do agree that her being able to build the spore-capture bullet was unrealistic, but her mastery of the Spores themselves made sense to me. We also don't know exactly how long she was at sea. On first reading I thought it was a few weeks, but now I think the story may take place across as long as a year and a half. Given that span of time, her learning is still VERY fast, but not unbelievably fast given that she was working from existing designs.

Spoilers for Tress and Isles of the Ember dark reading!! . . . . The dragon Xisis is mention in the Ember dark preview chapters. The ship they use is lent to them by Xisis!

I'm extremely unclear on the specific size of the Spores, but I think that's because each type of spore is a different size. The best I can figure is that Zephyr and Verdant are the smallest, being around poppy seed size, with Midnight being the largest at close to the size of a pea. All the others fall between those sizes, but I'm unsure which Spore is which specific size inside that range.

i really enjoyed your chata bout AI voices and potential changing of audiobook narrators and ahhh i'm so conflicted! i also haven't really seen anyone talk about it, so i guess you're just ahead of the curve :) I'm curious how your comments will hold up a year or so from now... :) great video!

23:43 this isn't necessarily true. In one of Khriss' commentaries Khriss says that Rosharan Lightweaving is the closest to the original Yolish variant of the ability. IMO, this means that "lightweaving" simply means "illusion magic" as opposed to a specified ability from a specific source, so the Lightweaving that went away was an Aonic illusion

The brief tangent you went on about AI is interesting, considering that the third Secret Project, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, has a big focus on art and there is a plot element that is pretty analogous to AI. So assuming you guys cover Yumi in the future, I'm looking forward to what you have to say about on the subject.

This is my favorite of the Secret Projects so far (though I can definitely see an argument for Sunlit Man), and probably ranks just under Stormlight and Mistborn Era 1 as far as Sanderson stories. I do love the tone and lighthearted but still tense adventures. I did feel a little let down with how the Sorceress was taken down: I thought Tress should have had more agency there. Speaking of, did you guys know that we have seen the Sorceress before? She is in Mistborn: A Secret History!

👑Kings👑

Hey guys, I have a book recommendation! There's a sci-fi series that I recently discovered that honestly broke my brain when I read it. The series is called 'Zones of Thought' by Vernor Vinge. The first book is a hugo award winner. I would love to hear what you guys think of the books in this series!!

7:30 microphones are not meant to be breathed into. Overall this hasn't been an issue for you guys, but this segment was really distracting for me

Why are we so fascinated about AI taking the creative jobs, and not the labor ones. I honestly had to skip through that

You look like tom brady 😂😂