Tress = I Hate Dragons Redux?

[Mason Wheeler]

Please finish reading Tress of the Emerald Sea before reading this.  Unmarked spoilers ahead!

Brandon didn't mention it in the author's note at the end, but this story in many ways felt eerily similar to Brandon's incomplete story I Hate Dragons.

• World geometry: IHD is set on a cubical world, where each of the six faces has its own different style of magic.  Tress's world has twelve regions, each pentagonal in shape, implying that it is a dodecahedron (d12, for all the D&D players out there) where each pentagonal face has its own distinct type of magical spores.
• Moon worship is common to both worlds.
• A main antagonist in both stories, the first one encountered, is a dragon.  Intelligent and capable of speech, the dragon engages in verbal sparring with our protagonist.  Skip was presented to the dragon as bait by dragon hunters; Tress was presented to the dragon as a gift by someone "hunting" for a boon from the dragon.
• The second main antagonist is a sorceress, known in both stories simply as "the sorceress."  She comes from a different face from the protagonist and has quite unusual magical powers.  Both sorceress's homes are named after a time of day: the IHD sorceress is from "Dawnface" whereas Tress's sorceress is from the Midnight region.
• A defining character quirk of both protagonists is their love of collecting an unusual thing: cups for Tress and words for Skip.

We only have 3 IHD chapters, so the fact that there are so many close parallels is rather suggestive.  Anyone else think Brandon must have drawn from IHD in writing Tress of the Emerald Sea?

[Werewolff Studios he/him]

1 hour ago, Mason Wheeler said:

Please finish reading Tress of the Emerald Sea before reading this.  Unmarked spoilers ahead!

Brandon didn't mention it in the author's note at the end, but this story in many ways felt eerily similar to Brandon's incomplete story I Hate Dragons.

• World geometry: IHD is set on a cubical world, where each of the six faces has its own different style of magic.  Tress's world has twelve regions, each pentagonal in shape, implying that it is a dodecahedron (d12, for all the D&D players out there) where each pentagonal face has its own distinct type of magical spores.
• Moon worship is common to both worlds.
• A main antagonist in both stories, the first one encountered, is a dragon.  Intelligent and capable of speech, the dragon engages in verbal sparring with our protagonist.  Skip was presented to the dragon as bait by dragon hunters; Tress was presented to the dragon as a gift by someone "hunting" for a boon from the dragon.
• The second main antagonist is a sorceress, known in both stories simply as "the sorceress."  She comes from a different face from the protagonist and has quite unusual magical powers.  Both sorceress's homes are named after a time of day: the IHD sorceress is from "Dawnface" whereas Tress's sorceress is from the Midnight region.
• A defining character quirk of both protagonists is their love of collecting an unusual thing: cups for Tress and words for Skip.

We only have 3 IHD chapters, so the fact that there are so many close parallels is rather suggestive.  Anyone else think Brandon must have drawn from IHD in writing Tress of the Emerald Sea?

This is a really interesting comparison! Good eye for noticing this indeed - he's probably pulled a bit from that story for sure. The dragon encounter especially.

One thing to mention is that I don't believe Lumar itself is a dodecahedron, but you're correct in thinking that the moons float around it like the faces on a d12; a sphere with a sphere of spheres.