Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

Leyssandra reviewed Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

Read it!

4 stars

If I could ask for one of Brandon Sanderson's books to become a movie, it would be this one.

Elements of 'Your Name' and 'The Matrix', in ancient Korean / futuristic Japanese settings.

Brandon Sanderson is incredible when it comes to fantasy, plot, and characters, but one of his weakest points has always been romance. In this book it was good! Not great mind you, but good! 4 stars. 5 or 6 stars for everything else omg.

But... the excessive amounts of info dumping at critical points lost it another star. Really though. Read it! This book is genius.

If I could ask for one of Brandon Sanderson's books to become a movie, it would be this one.

Elements of 'Your Name' and 'The Matrix', in ancient Korean / futuristic Japanese settings.

Brandon Sanderson is incredible when it comes to fantasy, plot, and characters, but one of his weakest points has always been romance. In this book it was good! Not great mind you, but good! 4 stars. 5 or 6 stars for everything else omg.

But... the excessive amounts of info dumping at critical points lost it another star. Really though. Read it! This book is genius.

Alberto de Murga reviewed Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

A love story about two very different lonely souls in very different worlds connecting in the most unexpected way

5 stars

As usual in Sanderson's books, the start is slow, invested into world building and a new “magic system”. The setup has charisma, and we can see how the characters are so different yet so similar, both trapped in their own duties, loneliness, and trauma.

Cthos reviewed Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

Solid Sanderson Novel, some Weird Quirks

4 stars

Content warning Lots of Cosmere Spoilers

Like Tress, this book contains a number of Cosmere in-references and features Hoid as the narrator. Pretty quickly you find that Hoid has found himself in yet another ridiculous situation where he's incapacitated in some way (like Tress), but he's unable to act in this one (unlike Tress). Taking Hoid's place in the role of "mentor" is Design, the cryptic that Hoid picked up in the Stormlight Archives. Now she's a buxom woman now (or rather, the illusion of a buxom woman) with "definitely very human mannerisms". I enjoyed her persona here, it provided the comic relief as a stand-in for Hoid. They really are made for each other.

The ideas behind how the Nightmares work and how the world functions really didn't make sense to me at first, but when the reveal comes at the end of the novel it all satisfyingly clicked into place. Like, in the initial chapters, I was wondering if it was tidally locked, but turns out, no.

Other thoughts:

The moral lesson / Painter's growth was good. He did that thing again where he has a character plainly lay out the backstory which is useful, but I'm not a big fan of that. The third viewpoint character (who didn't really get any viewpoint scenes) was nice, I enjoyed her. The reference to Threndony was A+.

jussi reviewed Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

Review of 'Yumi and the Nightmare Painter' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Beautiful story

Jenny Jaybles

rated it

Nov. 7, 2023

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

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