Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter is one of the Secret Novels written by Brandon Sanderson during the pandemic. Sanderson wrote this book for his wife Emily and it shows. Emily has apparently been wanting him to write something with more romance in it for some time, so he decided to write Yumi and the Nightmare Painter for her.

I think it’s fitting, then, that my husband decided to read the hardcover version aloud to me, so I got to talk with him about it as we read.

***SPOILER ALERT!!! This is a book review with spoilers.***

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The Art

I absolutely loved the art! Out of all the Secret Novels, this one had my favorite art by far. If you listen to this on audiobook, I highly recommend you find a hard copy to check out the beautiful illustrations.

The Story of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

Brandon Sanderson usually puts some kind of romantic subplot in his stories, but this one is more of a romance story with a fantasy subplot. At first, I wasn’t too excited about that; I’m really not a fan of a lot of romance, and I had just finished reading Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (read my review of Fourth Wing here), which is definitely a romantasy book that I have very mixed feelings about. When I finished reading Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, I turned to my husband and wondered aloud why I had liked this book while the romance in Fourth Wing had driven me nuts. He summed it up pretty well: “You appreciate well-written, fleshed out characters.” There is a notable absence of sex in this book, as with most of Sanderson’s books, and focuses instead on the relationship that builds between the two protagonists.

Sanderson’s storytelling style goes something like this: introduce cool idea, meet characters, spend a long time getting to know them and the conflict, watch them struggle, struggle a lot more, and then succeed. Some people find this a bit repetitive and don’t like it. I don’t mind it since there’s usually a lot of cool worldbuilding and some kind of twist he’s building up to that keeps my attention. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter is a romance story, though, so he put a lot more time into the characters developing their relationship. I found myself (a little impatiently) wondering how long we were going to spend on them and when the rest of the plot was going to show up.

Eventually it did, and all of the character building paid off, as is typical for a Sanderson story.

The World

I love how Brandon Sanderson draws on his experiences in South Korea, infusing this story with his love of the Korean culture. He also pulls on modern Japanese culture as well, but I have a particular connection to the Korean element because both of my parents served missions for our church in South Korea as well, and so I grew up hearing stories of the people there, listening to my parents talk in Korean, and eating Korean food that my parents made using a recipe book that my dad’s mission had put together from recipes gathered from local Koreans. Reading Yumi and the Nightmare Painter was particularly special to me because I could see how much he wove Korean culture into the story. I loved that element of the book.

The Machine

The main villain of the story is a man-made machine that destroys the world in its single-minded quest to carry out its instructions. This parallels the rise of A.I.s in the real world and paints them as soulless monsters.

I appreciate the depiction of the machine as a computer incapable of complex thought or morals, as that is accurate to the real world; computers can only do exactly what they were programmed to do and nothing more. But if it really is supposed to be a commentary on real world A.I.s, I would have liked to see the characters recognize that the machine was merely an artifact of the minds of those who created it, making them and their ambitions the villains of the story instead of a machine incapable of doing nothing more than exactly what it was built to do.

The Twist

My husband and I spent much of the book hypothesizing and predicting what on earth the nightmares were and how the two main characters were related to each other in space and time. That was a ton of fun for us.

Conclusion

I loved this book despite my initial worries about it being a romantasy/romantic fantasy novel written by Brandon Sanderson, who is not known for his romance novels. If you’re looking for a steamy or spicy romance novel with a touch of fantasy, this book is not for you. But if you’re looking for a beautifully illustrated story about two young people in a difficult situation who slowly develop feelings for each other and end up saving the world, then maybe give Yumi and the Nightmare Painter a try.