Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
Brandon Sanderson
Painter is a lone warrior, isolated from his past friends by a mistake that we don’t know exists. He protects the borders with his bamboo art, and survives from day to day. Yumi is a spirit whisperer, ritually required to do nothing for herself except make art to please the spirits. One exists in darkness, while the other exists on a hot planet. When a Connection is formed between the two, it seems like the spirits want something. But what is it?
I’ve already read this twice, and I don’t even have the physical copy yet. Something about the storyline, the art, and the awkward main characters appeals to me. This is another of Sanderson’s efforts at writing an unconventional romance/love story. Everytime someone complains about the lack of sex in his writing, I wonder to myself why that would be required for a good story. So many TV series seem to rely on people cheating on each other to make the story happen / fill in time!
Who do I like more? Yumi or Painter? I don’t know! I love Painter and the fact that he simply knows nothing about how the world works, but in a different way to Yumi not knowing it either. It’s also good to see Sanderson writing younger characters. Is it a comment on society that Painter seems to have no purpose? Personally, I wouldn’t want to survive as he does.
I’m still a little unclear on how the shroud works, and how/why there are individual sections. Why has it not covered everything? Also, how does Yumi go from the same day to multiple days and not be remade every day at the same town (I can’t give more detail here or I’ll spoil a major plot point)?
It’s no wonder also why I enjoy it when Sanderson says the inspiration was partially Final Fantasy X. That’s the first FF I ever played, and the only one I could kind-of win (but never finished). Why not have a crazy job to a real-world human, but a job that is typical in its story-world? I can see myself revisiting this novel as a comfort read quite often – a much easier read that The Way of Kings or the Mistborn novels.
I pre-bought this novel as part of Year of the Sanderson kickstarter. I’m still loving it, and am dreading 2024 – no more bonus books!
Seriously, if the whole island is covered with wild unicorns, how can there be any furry creatures left? There are so many plot holes. So many. Oh look, a book that will teach you everything! Oops, lost it. Wooh, got past one enemy and now assume that I’m invincible! I was very disappointed in the end of both books, particularly the second one. Has Skandar just conveniently forgotten about the other unicorn that he keeps running into?
It took me ages to read this novel because 1) I thought it was the first in a series and I didn’t want to commit and 2) I didn’t notice that it had gay protagonists. Unfortunately the plot was lacking. I’m not sure why I kept reading it – maybe I got too attached to poor Kadou and his panic attacks? Then again, I hated Kadou’s ex- who was just a comical steriotype of a gay man calling everyone ‘darling’ and ‘sweetheart’. Evemer tries to be the hard counterpoint to the ex- but never really becomes a 3D character.
Character development? Not really. Amazing world-building? Yup, maybe! Fun storyline where you can’t decide whether you want the protagonist to live or die? 100%! Although I had no real prediction as to how it was going to go down, the ending was highly satisfying.
It’s obvious that Lackey has been paying attention to the media in terms of trying to get more obvious acknowledgement of poverty into the spotlight. There are hundreds of people who go hungry every day, including those who starve to death. I really like it when my favourite authors try to bring visibility to these issues.
I liked Duke Valdemar and I didn’t have any objections to the second perspective of his sister-in-law. The opening pages make it seem as if Delia will have a big role to play, but as yet, she hasn’t achieved anything major during the novel. The Duke on the other hand has his nose poked in everywhere, and is devious to boot! His compassion and humility could read as trite, but his approach to life is always consistent.
Part of the struggle in this novel is that I wasn’t sure whose side I was on. Ok, it’s terrible that humans are losing part of their lives to monsters when they time travel. But also, how cool is that?? It could only be more awesome if they could take a regular human with them.
I was disappointed in this novel. There were too many characters, and not enough depth for each one. I wanted to know more about Helga’s story. I wanted to know less about Galen and more about the “original three” characters of Brocc, Liobhan and Dau. Things seemed to take forever, and then I just wasn’t satisfied with the ending.
First, the book title. There is only one Midnight girl. There’s also a Morning girl and a Midday girl. Technically they are all ‘monsters’, but to me they were more minions of their Jagas (witches). There’s a whole lot of alliteration going on there. Then again look at that glorious saturated colour in the cover.
