Art is about feelings and emotion. It's about letting them escape, so they can be shared. It's about capturing a truth about yourself. Like you're ripping a hole in your chest and exposing your soul.
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
by Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Fantasy
About: Nikaro lives in a dark world, with literal walking nightmares it's his job to keep at bay. Yumi lives in a bright, burning world, where she calls spirits forth to help the people. Both jobs save lives, though the tools they use are a little unusual... Apparently nightmares fear ink and spirits like rocks. But when these two souls somehow swap bodies, they have to not only work out why they've been pulled from one world to another, they also have to learn the other's craft before people get hurt. They may not look like heroes, but Nikaro's paintbrush and Yumi's stack of rocks are exactly what their worlds need.
Thoughts
I love reading author postscripts - at the end of this book, Sanderson says this is his favourite of the secret projects. I can totally see why. It's absurdly creative in terms of world building and the two main characters have such a strong bond. I loved watching them figure each other out, and how that leads them to understanding their own issues. There's really great character development; you get the sense early on that Yumi and Nikaro will be very changed by the end but there are no giant leaps. Everything is done as gradually and artfully as one of Yumi's rock stacks.
The humour is another balancing act that works so well. Like Tress of the Emerald Sea, there are a lot of funny moments (not surprising given it's the same narrator) but it doesn't take away from the high stakes and epicness that the climax brings.
What I loved the most was for sure the romance. It was sweet and made this such a special read for me. But, while that makes me want to give this book the full 5 stars and cement it as a favourite... I found the reveals at the end way too confusing. The narrators pull it off well with a lot of explanations that don't feel like info dumps but, well, there are info dumps and ones that still don't entirely fit in my mind. Like, I understand what happened but it doesn't feel right somehow. I think there were just too many layers to the reveals.
Overall though this was an incredibly sweet and creative story with highly unique characters.
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