Tress of the Emerald Sea

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 Tress of the Emerald Sea, by Brandon Sanderson

A friend of mine recently started a book club, and for our second book we decided to read something fun -- this one.  It's a long time since I read any Brandon Sanderson, and he's developed this whole Cosmere thing that I don't really understand (I'm planning to learn), but this book is a sort of one-off for fun set on an obscure planet of the Cosmere.  It's narrated by a visitor, whose real name is not mentioned and who is apparently not a character from another book.  And as this was something of a personal project and more of a YA story, Sanderson lets quite a bit of his native silliness out in this novel.

Tress lives on a bitty little island in the Emerald Sea -- a salt-mining outpost that people aren't allowed to leave, that's how unpleasant it is.  She's a nice girl with tangly hair (thus the nickname) who works hard and is good friends with the gardener up at the castle, though she knows he's really the duke's son.  Duke's sons are not allowed to talk to commoners, though.  And when the duke notices, he decides to take Charlie on a voyage to find a bride suitable to his station.  Charlie's plan to bore all the girls so they won't want to marry him backfires spectacularly; the duke simply sells him off to the evil Sorceress in the Midnight Sea, and adopts a compliant nephew.

Tress therefore needs to go rescue her friend -- an impossible task.  She stows away on a ship and sails the Emerald Sea herself, and here we find the central magic system to the story: this world doesn't have a ton of water.  What it does have is moons that dump endless amounts of spores, which act sort of like liquid.  You can sail on an ocean of spores, but it's incredibly dangerous, as the touch of water activates the spores according to their nature.  Emerald spores grow vines, right through your lungs and skull if you breathe them in.  Crimson spores grow crystal spikes, and Midnight spores...you don't want to know.  Only salt or silver in sufficient quantities can kill them.

As Tress makes friends with reluctant pirates and a talking rat, starts to learn the secrets of spores, and schemes to get to the Midnight Sea, she also gets closer to meeting some people she won't understand at all.  Maybe this is all a giant trap; maybe she's an unimportant girl caught up in currents she can't comprehend.  Maybe that rat knows more than he's letting on?

This was a great read.  Complex and layered, funny and poignant, everyone grows and nobody's perfect, but a lot of them are trying.  A very enjoyable story.

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