Was there some Oz inspiration involved in this book that we know of?

[Ripheus23]

A stretch: an emerald sea vs. an emerald city.

A little less: the Sorceress vs. the Wizard. OTOH the Sorceress is also like a Witch...

I haven't gotten far enough to know what's up with the talking animal character, so not sure if it's even thematically reminiscent of e.g. WICKED.

Also, I'd be implying an analogy between Tress and Dorothy, probably. Unless Sanderson read a bunch more of the old Oz books or something, maybe Tress is more Ozma-like, who knows but I wish I knew more about Sanderson's reading background... I did understand in advance that a different story he's writing was inspired, structurally, by FF6, but I think that was mostly luck at the time (my actual evidence base was almost totally the vibes I got from books written a while ago, before the ones where my guess was supported). (A horrible sample: I for some reason automatically visualized the FF10 sphere grid when I originally read about cosmere spiritwebs, and that accounted hugely for my belief that Sanderson draws inspiration from the FF games at all, which is true, fine, but that was not a clearly justified inference, by me, at the time. So I don't want to be like, "I was right about that, so maybe I'm right about Tress and Oz," I already feel even less inwardly confident in this newer analysis/cross-reference.)

[Treamayne]

7 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

A stretch: an emerald sea vs. an emerald city.

A little less: the Sorceress vs. the Wizard. OTOH the Sorceress is also like a Witch...

I haven't gotten far enough to know what's up with the talking animal character, so not sure if it's even thematically reminiscent of e.g. WICKED.

Only insofar as both stories draw on some of the same Fairy Tale inspirations. The direct inspirations were Princess Bride and Dragonriders of Pern. WoBs:

Spoiler

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Brandon Sanderson

So, as you might have figured out, this is written in Hoid/Wit’s voice. It’s a novel length Hoid story, like the Dog and the Dragon or Wandersail–except 100,000 words long. A few notes to make.

1. Yes, he’s telling the story in-world to someone. You might be able to pick up some of the context of who he’s talking to–but it’s not meant to be explicitly obvious. You don’t need to stress about that, as it’s not relevant to the story. Just know that this isn’t written to you (you don’t exist in the cosmere) but is instead meant to be him telling the story to someone in the cosmere listening.
2. In this case (unlike some of his stories) he’s chronicling actual events in the cosmere. Meaning, Tress is a real person from the cosmere, and her world is an actual place–neither are Hoid inventions. He takes a few liberties in the narrative, but mostly, this is canon. And can be assumed as such. Though the story isn’t about him, he has a role to play in it, and you’ll find out why he’s there through the course of the book.
3. This slightly fairy tale vibe, then, is intentional. I wouldn’t personally consider this a children’s book, though. It’s meant to be something more like the Princess Bride. As you get further into it, the fairy tale vibe fades a little (but not completely) into an epic fantasy–though one filtered through the prose and voice of a storyteller sitting down to tell about one of his adventures.

And speaking of the Princess Bride… that was actually a direct inspiration. This book came about because I showed the Princess Bride to my kids for the first time. I love that movie, and still do–as does my wife. But after the movie, we were chatting, and she made the observation that the princess from the film isn’t terribly… proactive. (To put it mildly.) The story is named after her, but she doesn’t actually DO anything.

She can’t even effectively hit a giant rat with a stick. The prompt for me, then, came when she asked, “Why did Buttercup just sit around after she heard her love had been taken by pirates? Wasn’t there anything she could have done?”

That’s where it started. It mixed with me wanting to find places to work in the Aethers (which are very relevant to the later cosmere) into a book somewhere. That, plus my love of the process of fluidization (where a granulated material, like sand, behaves somewhat like a liquid when air is forced through it.) I rammed these things together. A world where people sail upon powder or dust, instead of water. A way to start introducing the aethers to people as a cosmere magic. And the basic premise: What if Buttercup were more proactive?

The result is Tress of the Emerald Sea. A tale of pirates, dangerous spores, and (because Hoid is involved) occasional self-important monologues. It will be the first of the four books in our Year of Sanderson Kickstarter, and will ship to you January 2023.

Secret Project #1 Reveal and Livestream (March 3, 2022)

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<edited for length, relevance and spoiler removal>

Some Anonymous

How high up are the moons away from the planet? Closer to hundreds of miles, like the ISS? Tens of thousands of miles, geosynchronous orbits? If you have that thought out?

Brandon Sanderson

We have discussed it, and I think I'm gonna RAFO it for now. I will say: my current impression is, definitely not as close as the ISS. But not so far, like... One of my inspirations, if you didn't pick up on it already, is obviously Anne McAffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books. Which, if you haven't read those, there are two planets that pass very close to each other, and when they do, dangerous environmental hazards pass from one planet to the other, risking extinction on the habited planet. And I've always loved that setup. And this is a little bit inspired by that. And I don't know how far apart those are, but I'm gonna say: I think it's further than the ISS. But who knows?

Tress Spoiler Stream (March 31, 2023)

 

Hope that helps