Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

I have heard many things about Brandon Sanderson and his books, and his universe, and this year I made it a goal of mine to stretch into more larger series and see if I liked it. I thought this was a good place to start, with a low level of commitment if I didn't end up liking it but the option to dive more into a deeper universe if I ended up finding something I really loved. Where I ended was, frankly, somewhere in the middle, but that's okay.

There seems to be quite a lot to talk about with this book but really two things stick out the most to me. One is that, not being familiar with actually reading anything in the Cosmere universe, I wasn't aware of who or what this Hoid character was--or even that the narrator was himself an established character. I found that an interesting angle overall. Ultimately though I did find it a bit weak for a few specific points, specifically near the end. It seemed a bit of a cop-out for Hoid to explain the nuances of what was going on with Yumi and Painter to us, the reader, out of universe, while the two of them and the broader world wouldn't be able to have learned some of the facts explained. I didn't hate this, as I appreciated the explanations Hoid gave, it just struck me as fairly lazy to have Yumi and Painter discover 90% of it and then a character with essentially omniscience over the history of events explain the 10% they never would have known, but still is important to the book. I think what soured me to this was actually specifically that it didn't come from a narrator, but an actual character, who was speaking to the reader and thus came across like he was taking us aside to tell us what was really going on. I suppose, in the end, I was a little over the use of a narrator character giving his flavor in strange places I just felt were unnecessary.

Secondly, I was struck throughout reading the book how much it was like Final Fantasy X. In the end, Brandon Sanderson admitted as much to himself and it was in such a way that as I listened to the audiobook start the sentence I knew exactly what it was going to say before it said it. This book absolutely borrows from the story, and while that does in fact make it unique in many ways FFX is itself unique, that does somewhat hinder my impression of it knowing the book is explicitly based on FFX. I like FFX enough, and I like this enough, and the reasons for my positive and negative feelings for both are not identical, and that's pretty interesting to me. I think the story works quite well, and is told compellingly enough here that I was pretty gripped to continue on and rarely bored. The characters are fun and their interactions were endearing, especially Yumi and Painter, and one thing I really really did quite enjoy about the story was the emphasis on art and artists and gripping with the value your art brings to the world and to those around you. It felt sincere about this and it did speak to me on some level as someone with a relationship to this myself.

Ultimately, I think I will read some more of Brandon Sanderson here and there, but I am not finding myself compelled to dive deep into his universe, at least not at this time.