My favorite section of this book is the carnival scene. It feels so genuine and sweet, really amplifying the blindside when it's ripped away. I also love how it completely turns the "liar revealed" trope on its head, and instead of having a dramatic falling out Yumi forgives Nikaro and it makes their relationship stronger. This is my favorite book, not just in the Cosmere, but in general. I'm a sucker for love stories.
Yumi is a great book and I loved spending time with Design! Hoid being a coat rack for the whole thing was hilarious. I like that the point was not for Yumi and Painter to learn how to use each other’s magic systems in order to solve the problem. Rather, Painter learns from Yumi to ask for forgiveness and help, and Yumi learns from Painter to be more daring and to uhm engage in hooliganism. I also like that the Cosmere Secret Projects are so Hoid-centric. Two Hoid-narrated stories, two Hoid apprentice stories. As Hoid has a third apprentice, and Brandon has tried experimenting with Hoid’s “voice” more, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for potential future secret projects.
Yay! I’ve been waiting on this one! I didn’t think any of the secret projects could top tress, but Yumi really surprised me. 9/10 for me and my personal favorite secret project. I feel like it was refreshing to have a Brando sando book with a different vibe. The world building and cosmere connections were insane too!! Side note: if you like this story yall should watch Your Name, which I believe Sanderson credits as an inspiration for this book. I usually don’t like romances, but this one blew me away.
I just got to you guys discussing the ending - Yumi was so Invested, the machine couldn’t control her the way it could control regular people. She was killed initially along with everyone else, but then pulled herself together again. The best the machine could do to her and to the other yoki-hijo was contain them in a single day that they’d act out ad infinitum, with daily memory manipulations at night. That’s why they all had their own closed-off habitats, based on what the world looked like in Yumi’s original time. Yumi had gotten so Invested over time and just so good at rock stacking, she actually managed to briefly wrest a spirit from the control of the machine. That spirit then established a Connection between her and Painter, whom the spirit had noticed for going back for the kid at the beginning. That Connection started yoinking their Cognitive Shadows back and forth, which means that Yumi wasn’t “available” for her daily memory wipe when she was with Painter and she started making new memories as the machine just rolled with the situation and tried to adapt. Yumi could come back to life as she was Invested enough, combined with Painter’s Intent, she manifested a body. Compare her to Elantrians and Returned, she’s essentially immortal if she wants to be.
It makes a lot more sense with an explanation like that! I just was quite confused on the initial read. Probably makes for a better reread experience too though
@@NextChapterYT To clarify some more details: Yumi's world was "real" in the sense that it was physically re-created by the machine to match the memory of her last day pre-Shroud. It was all in physical world and they had physical bodies, but it was all simulated. So Painter did get physically yoinked into her body every day, it was not all just in their minds.
This "HERO" concept you recognize here is a theme Sanderson loves to visit. His YA series, "The Reckoners" is heavy on this theme. It is a good series to get your Sanderson jones on now that you finished the current Cosmere books.
You have great upload timing, I was just about to start working & had nothing to listen to. Yumi is great! I think i mightve liked it slightly more than sunlit man (sunlit man was incredible too tho), havent read tress yet. I really love sandersons view on art I think. Yumi & emperors soul are both novels where art and what art can be & do play a major thematic role and I think both of them are some of his best work. its just very interesting
Did you feel like there was a connection or similarities between the machine and Nightblood? Both were given simple commands and interpreted them in their own limited ways.
I'm looking at my kindle paperwhite right now, if you tap the very bottom left corner it rotates between page, time left in chapter, time left in book, location and blank. The bottom right corner just displays the percentage total all the time (except when the left is blank). From what I recall though not every book contains page numbers so that won't always be there.
🙌🏼 it’s so fun! Do you have favorites? Jaden and I both play! I am currently obsessed with my Fission Time-Lapse. There are a million videos online right now about how great they are, and they really are! It finally got me to over 400 ft, which was exciting! Also love my Buzzz, tee-bird, and uplink (although I just lost this one 😑) -Marty
@@NextChapterYT I think my favorites right now are my Plasma Volt and my Freetail. But I also love throwing the new Rollo! Such a unique disc that basically lets you throw shots as if you were throwing with your non-dominant hand
Ah sweet!! I’m a huge fan of MVP and throw the Reactor and Resistor almost constantly! I don’t have the distance or arm speed of marty so the Time Lapse isn’t my fave quite yet ;)
I personally love the kindle, I just have a plain paperwhite, so no audiobook functionality or anything. I keep the setting on time left in chapter. Watching the time go lower and lower is so satisfying to me, with every chapter completion triggering a 'win' in my head. For me its a small thing but it gamified reading which made me read more. I also love physical books but I find that I read more and can get through less exciting portions much more easily on the kindle. I read yumi about half and half physical copy and kindle. I loved the art style of the physical book and read a lot at night with no lights on with the kindle.
To the kindle question, i use an ebook mainly for, uh, money reasons, I like physical books way more but cant afford to just keep buying books like that. but ebooks being cheaper & obviously taking up less space is pretty nice. + a friend of mine has impaired vision & having a book where u can zoom in is pretty important
I struggled a little in the middle with Yumi. I really wanted them to get on with the mystery, but it took a backseat. I think if I better understood how it is partially a rom com, I think I would have been better. The Sanderlanche did help me on this one. I still think this is a solid Cosmere book and enjoyed it. I think this is one I would get a lot more out of the second time. Cosmere spoilers! There is another layer of Cosmere that I saw here. The machine doing these wild things made me think of two things. First: Sixth of the dusk and the threat of the machine. Secondly, Nightblood. The draining of power and the black smoke are very similar. Makes me wonder what is going to happen with invested machines/items.
As a Chinese kindle user for over 10 years, the main problem for reading on kindle is you won't keep the same font or format till finishing one book. So the location will change the presentation of each chapter. If you read on paper book, you tend to remember where you read THAT section, on the left page and in the second paragraph, let's say, and near the beginning of the book. Then if you want to go back, your searching will be very fast and precise and with purpose. But when location number is concerned, you can simply not do that.
That’s a big deal! I totally do the same “it was in this part of the book near the top of the left page”… I wonder if there’s a word for that phenomenon
This is my favourite of the secret projects, followed by Tress then there is a big gap between them both and the other two. The reason I'm not so fond of Sunlit Man is that I don't like the massive timeskip for the main character, I'd much rather see the steps leading to the story he is in than just jumping straight over them. I can't get invested in his future story when I am also seeing it recently begin, just as I wouldn't want to read the sci-fi era Mistborn trilogy then go back and do the modern era after it. The reason Yumi wins over Tress however is because of one of the main inspirations for Yumi's story - Final Fantasy X. I'm a fan of the game and its influence is pretty clear to see beyond what Brandon Stated at the end. _The opening of the game has the main character Tidas living in a huge hi-tec metropolis called Zanarkand, he is a star of a sport called Blitzball played in a stadium sized floating ball of water. During a big match a massive flying creature begins destroying the city with gravity attacks and smaller creatures that flake off its surface. As Tidas escapes through the devastated city he runs into a friend of his deceased father who seems to know what is happening, explaining that the creature is named 'Sin'. After they fight their way towards it they are pulled inside the creature and Tidas blacks out._ _Awakening alone in some old ruins Tidas tries to grasp what has just happened and is eventually attacked by creatures but gets saved by mysterious people speaking another language. After being put to work salvaging ruins from the seabed he is able to have a conversation with a young girl who speaks his language, after explaining that he's a Blitzball player from Zanarkand the girl asks if he hit his head because Zanarkand was destroyed by Sin 1000 years ago. Before he can fully contemplate this revelation the ship is attacked by Sin and Tidas is washed overboard._ _Awakening this time on a beach he makes his way to a village where a young woman called Yuna is just about to begin her pilgrimage to gain the power to defeat Sin by obtaining the 'Final Summon'. After confirming that his home was destroyed 1000 years ago Tidas joins Yuna and her group on her pilgrimage to the 1000 year old ruins of Zanarkand._ The world of 'Spira' has been terrorized by Sin for the last thousand years since it first appeared at Zanarkand, destroying any large cities or advanced machinery. Said to be punishment for mankind's over-reliance on technology the world has regressed to a simpler lifestyle in the hopes that one day they will have repented for the past and Sin will be gone._ All this is covered in the first hour or so of the game but already you can see some similarities and the potential for more. Yuna has a vital sacred duty to perform but Tidas, as an outsider, gives her new perspectives to consider and often asks uncomfortable questions as he tries to catch up on what everyone else views as common sense. At the end of Yumi Brandon points out how Nikaro and Yumi are similar to Tidas and Yuna in that they have cool fantasy jobs that are a natural result of the fantastical nature of their worlds (Tidas being and underwater sports star and Yuna can lay spirits to rest and summon giant mystical beasts (she's technically a necromancer really) but the links between the two stories go much deeper than he gives away here. I don't know if either of you are gamers but you might find FFX an interesting companion piece to Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. Annoyingly I've not seen any videos or the like from any other fans of _both_ works comparing them.
Minor spoilers for rhythm of war: This is my least favorite of the 3 cosmere secret projects because of the end. Specifically, I don’t like that the plot has to stop and Hoid gives a lecture on cosmere science. I keep comparing it to Navanis plot in RoW, which I loved, but the difference is that it was way more tied into the story. With RoW, we see Navani exploring and discovering things, which tells us about her character and thought process. For this book, we just get a lecture from Hoid and it doesn’t feel like it flows well
My favorite section of this book is the carnival scene. It feels so genuine and sweet, really amplifying the blindside when it's ripped away. I also love how it completely turns the "liar revealed" trope on its head, and instead of having a dramatic falling out Yumi forgives Nikaro and it makes their relationship stronger. This is my favorite book, not just in the Cosmere, but in general. I'm a sucker for love stories.
Love it. That was an awesome scene and the overall relationship between seeming opposites was powerful
Yumi is a great book and I loved spending time with Design! Hoid being a coat rack for the whole thing was hilarious.
I like that the point was not for Yumi and Painter to learn how to use each other’s magic systems in order to solve the problem. Rather, Painter learns from Yumi to ask for forgiveness and help, and Yumi learns from Painter to be more daring and to uhm engage in hooliganism.
I also like that the Cosmere Secret Projects are so Hoid-centric. Two Hoid-narrated stories, two Hoid apprentice stories. As Hoid has a third apprentice, and Brandon has tried experimenting with Hoid’s “voice” more, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for potential future secret projects.
Hoids ridiculous situations always make the book better for me too :)
Yay! I’ve been waiting on this one! I didn’t think any of the secret projects could top tress, but Yumi really surprised me. 9/10 for me and my personal favorite secret project.
I feel like it was refreshing to have a Brando sando book with a different vibe. The world building and cosmere connections were insane too!!
Side note: if you like this story yall should watch Your Name, which I believe Sanderson credits as an inspiration for this book. I usually don’t like romances, but this one blew me away.
Very cool! We’ll have to check it out! This book was definitely a great one!!
I just got to you guys discussing the ending -
Yumi was so Invested, the machine couldn’t control her the way it could control regular people. She was killed initially along with everyone else, but then pulled herself together again. The best the machine could do to her and to the other yoki-hijo was contain them in a single day that they’d act out ad infinitum, with daily memory manipulations at night. That’s why they all had their own closed-off habitats, based on what the world looked like in Yumi’s original time.
Yumi had gotten so Invested over time and just so good at rock stacking, she actually managed to briefly wrest a spirit from the control of the machine. That spirit then established a Connection between her and Painter, whom the spirit had noticed for going back for the kid at the beginning. That Connection started yoinking their Cognitive Shadows back and forth, which means that Yumi wasn’t “available” for her daily memory wipe when she was with Painter and she started making new memories as the machine just rolled with the situation and tried to adapt.
Yumi could come back to life as she was Invested enough, combined with Painter’s Intent, she manifested a body. Compare her to Elantrians and Returned, she’s essentially immortal if she wants to be.
It makes a lot more sense with an explanation like that! I just was quite confused on the initial read. Probably makes for a better reread experience too though
@@NextChapterYT To clarify some more details: Yumi's world was "real" in the sense that it was physically re-created by the machine to match the memory of her last day pre-Shroud. It was all in physical world and they had physical bodies, but it was all simulated. So Painter did get physically yoinked into her body every day, it was not all just in their minds.
They actually had rock stacking last year in the VIP room 25:11
Darn and we thought we were so original :P
This "HERO" concept you recognize here is a theme Sanderson loves to visit. His YA series, "The Reckoners" is heavy on this theme. It is a good series to get your Sanderson jones on now that you finished the current Cosmere books.
We will add them to the list! Good call
You have great upload timing, I was just about to start working & had nothing to listen to. Yumi is great! I think i mightve liked it slightly more than sunlit man (sunlit man was incredible too tho), havent read tress yet. I really love sandersons view on art I think. Yumi & emperors soul are both novels where art and what art can be & do play a major thematic role and I think both of them are some of his best work. its just very interesting
Perfect!! We will happily be the background audio to work ;)
Did you feel like there was a connection or similarities between the machine and Nightblood? Both were given simple commands and interpreted them in their own limited ways.
I'm looking at my kindle paperwhite right now, if you tap the very bottom left corner it rotates between page, time left in chapter, time left in book, location and blank. The bottom right corner just displays the percentage total all the time (except when the left is blank). From what I recall though not every book contains page numbers so that won't always be there.
Too bad, the page numbers are the best option! The percentage is too slow and the reading time (while I like it) is not Marty’s favourite feature ;)
A disc golf shout-out! Absolutely love playing at some of my local courses. Do you have any favorite discs in your bag right now?
🙌🏼 it’s so fun! Do you have favorites? Jaden and I both play! I am currently obsessed with my Fission Time-Lapse. There are a million videos online right now about how great they are, and they really are! It finally got me to over 400 ft, which was exciting! Also love my Buzzz, tee-bird, and uplink (although I just lost this one 😑) -Marty
@@NextChapterYT I think my favorites right now are my Plasma Volt and my Freetail. But I also love throwing the new Rollo! Such a unique disc that basically lets you throw shots as if you were throwing with your non-dominant hand
Ah sweet!! I’m a huge fan of MVP and throw the Reactor and Resistor almost constantly! I don’t have the distance or arm speed of marty so the Time Lapse isn’t my fave quite yet ;)
I personally love the kindle, I just have a plain paperwhite, so no audiobook functionality or anything. I keep the setting on time left in chapter. Watching the time go lower and lower is so satisfying to me, with every chapter completion triggering a 'win' in my head. For me its a small thing but it gamified reading which made me read more. I also love physical books but I find that I read more and can get through less exciting portions much more easily on the kindle. I read yumi about half and half physical copy and kindle. I loved the art style of the physical book and read a lot at night with no lights on with the kindle.
Love that! I’ll have to play with the settings to see if I can get it to work for me!
If you touch the lower left corner on a kindle, it will cycle through time percentage, page, min left in chapter/book.
To the kindle question, i use an ebook mainly for, uh, money reasons, I like physical books way more but cant afford to just keep buying books like that. but ebooks being cheaper & obviously taking up less space is pretty nice. + a friend of mine has impaired vision & having a book where u can zoom in is pretty important
But think of the bookshelves!! ;)
Yes it's Yumi time! This is my favorite from the secret projects
We enjoyed it a ton!
I struggled a little in the middle with Yumi. I really wanted them to get on with the mystery, but it took a backseat. I think if I better understood how it is partially a rom com, I think I would have been better. The Sanderlanche did help me on this one. I still think this is a solid Cosmere book and enjoyed it. I think this is one I would get a lot more out of the second time.
Cosmere spoilers!
There is another layer of Cosmere that I saw here. The machine doing these wild things made me think of two things. First: Sixth of the dusk and the threat of the machine. Secondly, Nightblood. The draining of power and the black smoke are very similar. Makes me wonder what is going to happen with invested machines/items.
Night blood is the coolest thing in the cosmere ;) can’t wait to learn more about it
As a Chinese kindle user for over 10 years, the main problem for reading on kindle is you won't keep the same font or format till finishing one book. So the location will change the presentation of each chapter. If you read on paper book, you tend to remember where you read THAT section, on the left page and in the second paragraph, let's say, and near the beginning of the book. Then if you want to go back, your searching will be very fast and precise and with purpose. But when location number is concerned, you can simply not do that.
That’s a big deal! I totally do the same “it was in this part of the book near the top of the left page”… I wonder if there’s a word for that phenomenon
@@NextChapterYT Chatgpt says it's "visual memory" : ). And I am sure I've heard this before, hahaha
Finally! Marty, you know I’ve been telling you since forever to get to this book haha
Aaaand here it is! ;)
@@NextChapterYT Glad you guys liked it!
There's a great Korean Comedy-Drama on (Canadian) Netflix called "Bad and Crazy". Season 1 is SO GOOD!
Thanks!! We will have to check it out!
“fresh of breath air” 54:50. What?!
😂😂 classic camera brain
This is my favourite of the secret projects, followed by Tress then there is a big gap between them both and the other two. The reason I'm not so fond of Sunlit Man is that I don't like the massive timeskip for the main character, I'd much rather see the steps leading to the story he is in than just jumping straight over them. I can't get invested in his future story when I am also seeing it recently begin, just as I wouldn't want to read the sci-fi era Mistborn trilogy then go back and do the modern era after it.
The reason Yumi wins over Tress however is because of one of the main inspirations for Yumi's story - Final Fantasy X. I'm a fan of the game and its influence is pretty clear to see beyond what Brandon Stated at the end.
_The opening of the game has the main character Tidas living in a huge hi-tec metropolis called Zanarkand, he is a star of a sport called Blitzball played in a stadium sized floating ball of water. During a big match a massive flying creature begins destroying the city with gravity attacks and smaller creatures that flake off its surface. As Tidas escapes through the devastated city he runs into a friend of his deceased father who seems to know what is happening, explaining that the creature is named 'Sin'. After they fight their way towards it they are pulled inside the creature and Tidas blacks out._
_Awakening alone in some old ruins Tidas tries to grasp what has just happened and is eventually attacked by creatures but gets saved by mysterious people speaking another language. After being put to work salvaging ruins from the seabed he is able to have a conversation with a young girl who speaks his language, after explaining that he's a Blitzball player from Zanarkand the girl asks if he hit his head because Zanarkand was destroyed by Sin 1000 years ago. Before he can fully contemplate this revelation the ship is attacked by Sin and Tidas is washed overboard._
_Awakening this time on a beach he makes his way to a village where a young woman called Yuna is just about to begin her pilgrimage to gain the power to defeat Sin by obtaining the 'Final Summon'. After confirming that his home was destroyed 1000 years ago Tidas joins Yuna and her group on her pilgrimage to the 1000 year old ruins of Zanarkand._
The world of 'Spira' has been terrorized by Sin for the last thousand years since it first appeared at Zanarkand, destroying any large cities or advanced machinery. Said to be punishment for mankind's over-reliance on technology the world has regressed to a simpler lifestyle in the hopes that one day they will have repented for the past and Sin will be gone._
All this is covered in the first hour or so of the game but already you can see some similarities and the potential for more. Yuna has a vital sacred duty to perform but Tidas, as an outsider, gives her new perspectives to consider and often asks uncomfortable questions as he tries to catch up on what everyone else views as common sense. At the end of Yumi Brandon points out how Nikaro and Yumi are similar to Tidas and Yuna in that they have cool fantasy jobs that are a natural result of the fantastical nature of their worlds (Tidas being and underwater sports star and Yuna can lay spirits to rest and summon giant mystical beasts (she's technically a necromancer really) but the links between the two stories go much deeper than he gives away here.
I don't know if either of you are gamers but you might find FFX an interesting companion piece to Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. Annoyingly I've not seen any videos or the like from any other fans of _both_ works comparing them.
Honestly neither of us have ever played FFX :P so that part went 100% over our heads 😂
👑KINGS👑
12:55 I seem to recall Brandon saying that this was how it was before what happened and that the planet changed. But I could be misremembering 🫣
🤯🤯
Minor spoilers for rhythm of war:
This is my least favorite of the 3 cosmere secret projects because of the end. Specifically, I don’t like that the plot has to stop and Hoid gives a lecture on cosmere science. I keep comparing it to Navanis plot in RoW, which I loved, but the difference is that it was way more tied into the story. With RoW, we see Navani exploring and discovering things, which tells us about her character and thought process. For this book, we just get a lecture from Hoid and it doesn’t feel like it flows well
Very true… important stuff to learn but the delivery could’ve been different
I read books on Kindle first and only buy physical copies of my absolute favorites
But I normally read a book every week.
That’s an awesome cadence!!
I only read physical books but then again, I am in my 50s.
I’m so jealous!
@@NextChapterYT Don't be jealous, you will be in your 50s one day too. :)
Like and comment for the algorithm. Thanks fellers!
Love it! Thank you!!
I think the inspiration is japanese anime/final fantasy game, not korean
Totally right, that’s just the closest comparison we had based on what we’ve seen since we haven’t seen any anime or played the game
wait.... you are not latino??? I thought you were lol
Nope! I do speak Spanish though! :)