Thoughts on Yumi and the Nightmare Painter (Spoilers)

[NameIess]

Had to make this one before @Ironwill2112 could get to it. (And hopefully the poll works out well, because it has been a while since I’ve made one and I’m doing it on mobile)

So, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. The best secret project, and my favorite non-Stormlight book that Brandon Sanderson has written. Why? Well despite this book having moments that make me cringe extremely hard (Yumi’s first meeting with Akane, I’m looking at you) Yumi and Painter’s relationship hits hard for me, and the book’s high moments are incredibly strong. Yumi and Painter at the fair, Painter protecting Yumi from the stable nightmare, and the penultimate scene of Painter painting Yumi are all incredible, emotionally resonant scenes.

I don’t want this to be too long, though there’s a lot more I could talk about, but I’ll add this: despite what Hoid might think about the matter, this book getting a happy ending makes it a better story.

[Myst He/Him]

11 minutes ago, NameIess said:

Had to make this one before @Ironwill2112 could get to it. (And hopefully the poll works out well, because it has been a while since I’ve made one and I’m doing it on mobile)

So, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. The best secret project, and my favorite non-Stormlight book that Brandon Sanderson has written. Why? Well despite this book having moments that make me cringe extremely hard (Yumi’s first meeting with Akane, I’m looking at you) Yumi and Painter’s relationship hits hard for me, and the book’s high moments are incredibly strong. Yumi and Painter at the fair, Painter protecting Yumi from the stable nightmare, and the penultimate scene of Painter painting Yumi are all incredible, emotionally resonant scenes.

I don’t want this to be too long, though there’s a lot more I could talk about, but I’ll add this: despite what Hoid might think about the matter, this book getting a happy ending makes it a better story.

I absolutely love it. I’m generally against romance or romance adjacent stuff(the fact that I consider Yumi to be romance adjacent should tell you that) but I thought it was natural. And it made sense. The moments the two shared were amazing.

I personally would rate this above Stormlight 3, so top 5, but yeah. It’s amazing.

I absolutely loved Design’s personality too.

I could go on and on. I need to reread it anyways. But it’s amazing 

[Frustration]

It was probably my second favorite secret project.

Despite a couple of flaws it was really solid.

I'd probably rank it above WaT but below TSM.

[Treamayne]

For me, least favorite of the Cosmere Secret Projects (but still better than Frugal Wizard). 

Not bad, per se (on the scope of books in general), but the ending ruined it for me. Granted, I have not yet done a re-read. 

My Reactions Post

This post explains better than I could, why the ending did not work for me. Excerpt:

On 7/26/2023 at 8:03 AM, Elegy said:

[T]he fact that the book tries to make the reader feel the sad ending without commiting to it. Which feels like a major fake-out.

<snip>

This one was the worst of all, because it made me feel the deeply emotionally resonant ending that the book could have had. That ending would have been such a stand-out in his work, people would talk about it all the time. But he dropped it for the "everyone's happy, also they take over the noodle shop", which feels like fan fiction, or a meme ending, to the point that I think it's possbible that Hoid just made it up on the fly because everyone in the audience was crying and the tragic ending might be what actually happened, because it felt like such an odd decision.

<snip>

(EDIT: To clarify, the ending would have been better if he hadn't made it seem like he wanted to commit to the sad ending in the first place. Having a happy ending for this story is fine. It's the fact that he wanted the reader to believe that the sad ending had already happened just to undo it that makes me mad. If he hadn't done that, I would have happily gone along with the happy ending, even though it wouldn't have been nearly as emotionally resonant to me as the one he almost did. At the very least, it wouldn't have felt dishonest.)

[Frustration]

48 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

For me, least favorite of the Cosmere Secret Projects (but still better than Frugal Wizard). 

Not bad, per se (on the scope of books in general), but the ending ruined it for me. Granted, I have not yet done a re-read. 

My Reactions Post

This post explains better than I could, why the ending did not work for me. Excerpt:

I agree the ending was probably the worst part of the book.

And honestly I agree with @Elegy. If Brandon had committed and killed Yumi this sub-forum would be a lot more lively. The fact that I can count on one hand the number of threads made more recently than two years ago is quite telling. That's white sand levels of irrelevance.

Edited 2 hours ago by Frustration