I didn't realize this when I started reading the cosmere, but every subsequent book you get through only increases the urgency of needing to get through everything remaining in a single pass, lest you lose context and have to put yourself through this process again.
This was the trap I found myself in for the past year and a half. I powered through the first 4 books of the stormlight archive, their width proving no challenge. Then various one offs, followed by the first era of Mistborn. Suffice it to say I was fairly Sanderson saturated at this point. The idea of immediately jumping into Mistborn era 2 and the absolute unit that was Wind & Truth, which sat on my bookshelf silently intimidating me, was a bit much to bear. So I took a slight Sanderson sabbatical.
A thousand chapters of One Piece later, I felt it was time to give this colorful little book that sat besides its hulking siblings a shot. It was a fun little book! There, review over. Would I place it anywhere near his best? Certainly not. But worth a little romp if you're already a cosmere veteran, certainly.
He does like to claim that his standalone books are clearly standalone, but I don't see how you can really get into this one without having read at least Stormlight. Otherwise the narration could be really odd and downright annoying. I do feel like maybe I should have read WoT before this one because chronologically at least the events of this occur after that. But I don't think there was anything that critical I missed, at least nothing a peruse of the coppermind wouldn't fix.
This book feels very polished. So precisely constructed, all the little ends tied off with neat little bows. It's clearly the sign of a master of this kind of writing, that he can seemingly with little effort excrete out this gleaming story, all the facets perfectly arranged. His writing style is clear and precise, the tone is consistent, the word choices don't feel clumsy. It doesn't feel at all like the Brandon of Elantris or Warbreaker with his clearly amateurish prose.
But a lot of that was already sanded away by the time we got to the Stormlight archive. Though this isn't the Brandon of that either. The writing in Stormlight felt more alive somehow, in some hard to define way. Maybe slightly grittier, messier? Still more exact than most writers ever achieve, but with something a little more organic to it. For what this book is though, I think the writing style is a strength.
The biggest highlight of this book is its visual storytelling. Though he has written vibrant settings before, none so explicitly like this one. It felt almost perfectly written for film, and given the recent news regarding Mistborn and Stormlight, that isn't an unreasonable expectation.
I was really drawn to the vividness of Painter's city draped in pink and blue hion lines. Very cyberpunk tokyo vibes. There were many hints of depth in the functioning of such a city that were mentioned, it would have added greatly to my enjoyment if we could have fleshed out this setting some more. But this is a rare Sanderson novel that is light on worldbuilding. I felt like I had more fodder to imagine the world of White Sand in my mind, despite only reading a few chapters of that.
Most sanderlanches tend to be fast and disorienting, but this was faster than most and probably the most deus ex machina like. The mechanics of it all felt far too simple and it was a little frustrating that it all ended so easily.
The core romance was compelling, especially the ending, but inherently given the size of the book and the pace it moves at, both characters felt underdeveloped. Both seem stuck in specific vignettes, which at least in Yumi's case makes some sense. I don't know that these are characters that will recur at all in the cosmere, but it's rare to get as happy an ending as this one, so I'll take it. All in all a nice little palate cleanser before I return to all the death and darkness of Scadrial.