Yumi is a yoki-hijo, a priestess who can summon spirits by stacking towers of rocks. Painter is, well, a painter, whose job is to paint Nightmares (which have substance and try to feed on people in their sleep). When a spirit asks Yumi for help, she finds herself connected to Painter. Each time they wake up, they are in the other’s body. Together, they have to figure out what is wrong and how to rescue the spirit.
For those of you familiar with Sanderson, this is much heavier on the romance side of things than much of his work. While there is still a magical mystery to be solved, the romantic thread is a major part of the plot. It’s very different from a lot of his work: more dreamlike, a “softer” magic system, and more romance.
Now, I will say that this book is narrated by Hoid, so that is a slight learning curve for someone who is unfamiliar with Sanderson and doesn’t know who Hoid is.
If I’m being honest, Hoid’s narration is not always my favorite. In the beginning of the book, his narration felt very heavy. It toned down as we got further into the book and we entered more of a deep third POV, with only occasional interjections by Hoid. Sometimes it was hard to tell if something was Hoid talking or the character’s thoughts, which I think is a major challenge of having a present semi-omniscient narrator while going slightly into another character’s POV. Anyway, his interjections were sometimes jarring and annoying. I got more used to it by the end, though, and it didn’t bother me as much.
Further, since it was a dual POV story (outside of Hoid, I mean) with one male and one female lead, the audiobook did the dual narrator thing that is typical for Sanderson’s (and many epic fantasy’s) books that change perspective. Usually I like this, but it felt weird to have a different narrator narrate half of it when it was still technically Hoid narrating, if that makes sense. It was fine, but just a little off-putting and pulled me out of the story a bit.
If you read the book, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the narration style!
Beyond that, there were a few parts of the plot that felt confusing and a bit unresolved at the end, but I won’t get into those to avoid spoilers. I still very much enjoyed the book, because I loved both of the main characters and their romance!
Content:
Sexual: PG-13 (barely sneaks in under R). There is only like 1 kissing scene, but two characters are naked in front of each other (kind of inadvertently) with sexual tension / undertones multiple times throughout the book. This is the biggest content warning for me. I think the situation was handled well-ish for what it was, but it still made me uncomfortable at times.
Violence: PG-13. Some dark, twisted, monster-type things. There isn’t really much human-on-human violence.
Language: PG-13. Some moderate swearing, but not too frequent.