Book Review: "Yumi and the Nightmare Painter" by Brandon Sanderson
“Why do we tell stories? They are a universal human experience. Every culture I've ever visited, every people I've met, every human on every planet in every situation I've seen…they all tell stories. Men trapped alone for years tell them to themselves. Ancients leave them painted on the walls. Women whisper them to their babies. Stories explain us. You want to define what makes a human different from an animal? I can do it in one word or a hundred thousand. Sad stories. Exultant stories. Didactic morality tales. Frivolous yarns that, paradoxically, carry too much meaning. We need stories.”
If you're feeling sad, a Brandon Sanderson book is what the doctor ordered (or even if you're not sad, it's not a bad idea to pick up a Sanderson book). I read Yumi and the Nightmare Painter after Tress of the Emerald Sea and am absolutely digging the women-centered stand-alone fantasy stories (although who knows, with it being the Cosmere and all, maybe not stand-alone for long) being put out by the Sanderson.
“Each yoki-hijo trained in an ancient and powerful art. A deliberate, wondrous artistry requiring the full synergy of body and mind. Geological reorganization on the microscale, requiring acute understanding of gravitational equilibrium. In other words, they stacked rocks.”
Based on ancient Korean and modern Japanese societies and cultures, our story centers around Yumi. Yumi is a yoki-hijo, trained since childhood in the art of summoning spirits. Why summon spirits? To help her society function. After being summoned by a display of artistic rock-stacking (yes, long story, read the book), each spirit can be petitioned by humanity to transform into something they need, like a farming implement or cart. Summoning spirits is the difference between prosperity and starvation for Yumi’s society.
She has been trained traditionally as a yoki-hijo, meaning she must sacrifice all individual wants and needs to serve the spirits and her society at large. Her meals are fed to her, she is bathed and dressed by attendants, so as not to distract from her duties. It is a difficult life and she longs for just one day to live as a normal person and make decisions for herself.
“She was so tired. Overwhelmed. There was something incredibly therapeutic about sitting, pulling a blanket around herself, and watching someone else’s problems for a while.”
Not long after admitting this longing to herself, she summons a spirit who asks for her help. The spirits are trapped, and they think she can help free them. Her, and another mysterious person, who the spirit Connects her to (again, read Sanderson books to know why I capitalize “connect” here). That would be Painter.
Painter, aka Nikaro, is a nightmare painter, who protects his city by patrolling the streets at night for nightmares. His city is shrouded in a living darkness, which produces living nightmares that feed on peoples’ fears. The only way to protect the city is via magical paint and canvas. Painters that encounter nightmares banish them back to the shroud by painting them into more harmless forms, like bamboo.
One day, Painter is Connected to Yumi, and they swap back and forth between their worlds, sharing bodies, which of course leads to all sorts of hilarious shenanigans. They must figure out why they were thrown together and how to help the spirits before time runs out.
I enjoyed watching their dynamic grow and evolve. Painter teaches Yumi that it is okay to be yourself and make decisions for yourself, something Yumi has never been able to do in her nineteen years of service to the spirits. In turn, Yumi helps Painter with self-discipline and to stand up for what you believe in. Within their growing bond, they bring out each other’s heroism, even though it manifests differently in each of them.
“She remembered days of exhaustion when all she'd wanted was a kind word, a teardrop’s worth of empathy.
Choice. She had a choice.
'You don’t have to be like her,' Yumi thought. 'You really don’t.'
Such a novel idea, and so much harder to do than she would ever have assumed. Still, Yumi forced out the words. The ones akin to those she always wished she could have heard.
“ ‘It’s all right,’” she whispered. “‘I know you're trying. That's what matters.’”
However, Yumi finds herself struggling with the newfound autonomy the spirits have granted her yet finds herself dreading the end of her adventure with Painter. Likewise, Painter cannot imagine his life without Yumi in it and does not want to go back to the loneliness of his solitary existence, his self-imposed exile within a thronging city.
“‘Despite it all, that's still my instinct,’ she thought, listening to Painter eat. ‘I know I've been lied to. Yet my training holds.’ It's a depressing fact. Abuse is a more effective form of captivity than a cell will ever be.”
After finishing this book, I found myself wanting more of their story. I could not help but notice the hints connecting it to the rest of the Cosmere, aside from Hoid again narrating the story, such as Cryptics (spren of illusions, light-weaving) and the swarm entities we meet in Tress of the Emerald Sea. Of course, there is all this talk about Investiture and Connection and the like, which I am still not able to put together completely yet. I am like Captain America, picking out that reference, recognizing something I have heard or seen before, but perhaps not really truly understanding the reference itself or its context.
In any case, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter is my new favorite of these standalone Cosmere novels (Tress of the Emerald Sea is a very close second). I can emote about it all I want in this review, but to read it does it more justice than my opinions and generalized explanations expressed here. What are you waiting for? Read the book!
Happy reading!
--BookOwl
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