Literature / Tress of the Emerald Sea

In the middle of the ocean, there was a girl who lived upon a rock.
This was not an ocean like the one you have imagined.
Nor was the rock like the one you have imagined.
The girl, however, might be as you imagined—assuming you imagined her as thoughtful, soft-spoken, and overly fond of collecting cups.

Tress is a very boring girl on a very boring island. She spends her day collecting cups, which she talks about with her very boring friend Charlie the gardener, who is most certainly not secretly the duke's son. No one else cares for either of them, but they enjoy their time together.

One day, the duke declares that his son must travel the kingdom and be married. Charlie (who, lo and behold, turns out to be the duke's son after all) promises Tress that he will do everything in his power to bore every potential suitor to death until his father has no choice but to bring him back to the island to be with Tress. Unfortunately, the duke catches wind of this, and after the first few failures sends Charlie off to sail the Midnight Sea and woo the sorceress. When his ship disappears, he is immediately declared dead, a more suitable heir is named, and everyone is happy.

Months pass, and Tress realizes that truly, no one cares. No one liked Charlie, who was always boring and never fighting or getting soldiers killed like a real noble should. The new heir is much better at that. It's much easier to just let it be, to let things continue as they always have.

This, Tress realizes, means that she'll have to rescue Charlie herself. Her first mission is to leave a home she has never wanted to leave—an island that she is forbidden from ever escaping.

Tress of the Emerald Sea is a novel of The Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson, the first of his "secret projects" written during the Covid-19 pandemic.

---

This novel provides examples of:

• Abnormal Ammo: Cannonballs are armed with spores and a charge of water to activate them, causing them to explode in a tangle of vines or some other debilitating substance.
• Alien Sea: The "seas" are massive reservoirs of colored pollen that rain down from the geostationary moons. Moisture causes the pollen to rapidly and violently grow, with the only thing that holds it back being salt and silver.
• Animal Companion: Shortly after leaving, Tress meets a talking rat named Huck who teams up with her for the rest of her journey. He's really Charlie after being cursed.
• Asshole Victim: The crew of the Oot's Dream are all covertly smugglers, and their captain is a lech. They’re also willing to enslave Huck because he’s a talking rat and to drug Tress bccause they believe she actually is a royal inspector. And they all end up dead as part of Crow's covert plan to turn her crew deadrunner. Despite this, the crew of the Crow's Song is troubled by their deaths since, while they didn't wish for their deaths, they recognize they were complicit in them.
• A-Team Firing: Ann, for all her love of guns and cannons, can't shoot straight to save her life. She's more of a threat to the people behind her than in front. It's revealed to stem from a mix of undiagnosed micropsia and her own failures weighing on her confidence.
• Beneficial Disease: The aether parasite in Crow's blood is constantly leeching water from her body to send back to the prime aether on the moon, but it also uses its powers to protect her from other threats so that it can keep draining her.
• The Big Board: The Sorceress has an incredibly detailed map of the planet on the floor of her tower. She needs it to adapt Aon Dor to work so far from home.
• The Bore: Charlie is incredibly, unbelievably boring. His own servants, people explicitly hired to listen to him, usually find excuses to interrupt him so that they don't have to listen to his inane ramblings. Tress, of course, loves his stories, the way he makes up histories for the cups she shows him. When he has to marry a princess, he cranks this up until the knob falls off to make sure that no one will consider marrying him.
• The Bus Came Back: Riina, a minor character from Mistborn: Secret History, returns after a seven-year real-world absence.
• Cassandra Truth: The officers become slowly convinced that Tress is actually a member of the (debatably real) King's Mask, a cabal of assassins working directly for the king. Since the King's Masks allegedly have to deny they're a member when asked, her attempts to persuade them otherwise only serve to convince them more.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The heavy pewter tankard that Charlie sends Tress from his journeys and that Tress takes with her when she leaves the Rock turns out to be very useful several times in the story.
  • Two midnight spores that Tress accidentally leaves on her work table when she rushes out of her cabin are later used by Captain Crow to spy on the mutineers.
• Condescending Compassion: The narrator makes a point of how Huck's "I didn't tell you to protect you" is basically a double whammy of "I Lied" and "you can't be trusted to make your own decisions" all rolled into a single line that's supposed to seem noble.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Charlie explains to Tress that a cup she got from a sailor was forged for an Iriali nobleman — but then all Iriali suddenly disappeared from their island.
  • Tress mentions that Death has nails in his eyes.
• Curse Escape Clause: Apparently, all the Sorceress's curses include one purely out of sadism. She likes having her victims know that there is a way to break their curse and what it is, but takes care to make it either exceedingly difficult or profoundly horrifying.
  • Hoid's curse can be broken by returning him to the Sorceress's dwelling.
  • Charlie's curse requires that he bring the woman he loves to the Sorceress's dwelling, there to be cursed. Hoid manages to change it so that he can break the curse by bringing the woman he loves to her home, there to be versed.
• Damsel in Distress: Tress notes that it's a pretty common fate for the women of most stories and suspects she's doomed to become one. She actually does get captured by the Sorceress at the end, but comes to realize that everyone needs help every once in a while, and having earned the love and respect of people who'll risk their life for yours is quite the accomplishment in and of itself. Also, she uses it as an opportunity to distract the Sorceress, giving her crew the opening they need to get Hoid into the tower.
• A Day in the Limelight: Zigzagged. Hoid is part of the narrative to an unusual degree, but has been turned into a Cloudcuckoolander by Riina's curse, which he let happen in order to finally gain the power of AonDor, the magic of Elantris. He is very much not himself during the events of the story, but back to normal by the time he narrates the tale.
• The Dead Have Names: While all the unimportant sailors are labeled "Dougs" to not clog up the story, Hoid does give the name and history of a single Doug, Pakson, after he's killed by the Crimson Sea. He also makes the point a few times that, in fact, they all had histories and personalities, with examples, and that he regrets not having the time to detail them all.
• Deal with the Devil: It turns out that Hoid made one with Riina. He let her curse him into a blithering idiot, but if he ever broke the curse he would become an Elantrian.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Hoid is one of the most powerful and cunning members of the Cosmere and knows where the Sorceress is located. Shame he spends the novel cursed into a blathering idiot instead of helping.
• Establishing Character Moment: Crow leaves Tress to cling for her life to the side of her ship, only allows the crew to pull her up after fifteen minutes, and then tries to order her thrown overboard anyway. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't get better.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Averted, guns have been invented on Tress's world and are used repeatedly throughout the story.
• Fantastic Firearms: In place of black powder, firearms and cannons use zephyr spores, an abundant natural resource that explosively release air when exposed to water.
• Fights Like a Normal: Crow's symbiotic aether can act with incredible speed and power to protect her, but she suppresses it in a fight specifically to rub her enemies' faces in how dangerous she is without any (overt) supernatural help.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: After learning that Captain Crow is dying from a magic parasite and has weeks to live, Tress starts to feel sorry for her. But Captain Crow really is just a remorseless, bloodthirsty pirate who murders several people and is willing to sell another into slavery just to save her own life. Ultimately, Tress has no choice but to find a way to defeat her.
• Geas: Hoid's narration uses this term to describe the Sorceress' enchantments. She gives specific conditions that the subject must meet in order for their curse to be broken, but they're magically prevented from talking about their curses so they can't tell people what needs to be done to free them.
• God of the Moon: People on Lumar worship the twelve moons as gods, which Hoid notes is understandable when they hover physics-defyingly low in the sky and rain magical spores down on the planet.
• Heel Realization: Laggart has one when he comes to realize that Tress' kindness is just that: completely authentic kindness. Having spent his life thinking everyone everyone would get you if you didn't get them first, he's horrified to realize that maybe he's the only cruel one. While he's still not perfect, the epilogue would confirm that he is improving.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Tress is ready for it several times, in order to protect the crew from Captain Crow and the Sorceress. The crew don't want to hear it.
• Homage: Sanderson stated that the story was directly inspired by The Princess Bride, both in content and in light fairy-tale vibe.
• Hostile Weather: What makes the Crimson Sea so dangerous is the unpredictable storms that can activate the spores. One storm nearly hits the ship twice and two more intersect right over the ship, which even Hoid lampshades as being hard to interpret as anything other than malevolent.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Captain Crow plots to sell Tress into slavery to a dragon in exchange for a magical cure for her terminal illness. However, when she drags Tress to Xisis, Tress tells him that she is the one selling Captain Crow to him as a slave. Crow tries to argue, but the dragon decides Crow would make a more useful servant and accepts Tress's offer.
• I Control My Minions Through...: Crow controls her crew through fear. Not only is she practically unkillable, she's genuinely terrifying even without her powers. She tricks the crew into becoming deadrunners, then frightens them under heel. Tress instead wins their loyalty much faster and firmer through kindness.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Not only can Crow pick people off a distant ship in a naval battle, she can do it with an archaic musket that doesn't shoot straight. The Time Abyss Hoid concedes that she's one of the best crack shots he's ever seen.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: Tress collects cups. She was having enough fun with that, and then Charlie started making up stories about the cups. Everyone else on the island finds both of them insufferably boring.
• It Was with You All Along: Hoid directly mentions this, noting that a lot of adventures could have been avoided if the heroine just checked to make sure she didn't already have what she was looking for.
  • Hoid keeps insisting that Tress already has everything she needs to defeat Captain Crow, even as Crow is taking Tress to Xisis. It turns out that what she needs to defeat Captain Crow is Captain Crow. When she takes Tress to trade to the Dragon, Tress simply trades her instead.
  • Huck the talking rat is Charlie after the Sorceress cursed him. Even if Tress had known this, she still would have had to go on her quest, but things would have been a lot easier if she knew the whole time.
• Kick the Dog: After seeing that she accidentally made Tress happy, Captain Crow kicks her in the stomach to make up for it.
• King Incognito: Charlie claims to be a groundskeeper rather than the duke's son to get around his inter-class relationship with Tress. It's...not a great disguise, to the point that it's a running gag between them.
  Charlie: Tress, I'm afraid I've lied to you. You see...I'm not the groundskeeper. I'm...um...the duke's son.
  Tress: Amazing. Who would have thought that Charlie the groundskeeper and Charles the duke's heir would be the same person, considering they're the same age, look the same, and wear the same clothing?
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Surrounded by guns and a newly-Elantrian Hoid, Riina decides to flee the planet as Tress demanded. Hoid notes that the ancient witch actually may have been able to win that fight, but one doesn't become an ancient witch by fighting unnecessary battles.
• Lemony Narrator: Very lemony and sarcastic. Fittingly, it's Hoid, the Cosmere's resident Deadpan Snarker supreme. From the first five chapters alone:
  Hoid: They were so good at being unique, they often did it together.
  Hoid: There was a tree once, but it did the sensible thing and died 3 years back.
  Hoid: He was six and a half feet tall and had a jaw so straight, it made other men question if they were
  Hoid: It was delivered by Hoid the cabin boy. (Yes, that’s me. What tipped you off? Was it perhaps the name?)
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The weather in the Crimson Sea acts so bizarre that many believe it's controlled by an evil spirit that's intentional screwing with people for fun. Given that this is the High Fantasy Cosmere series, believing in a spirit that controls the weather is completely rational, but Hoid has made extensive study of the planet and hasn't found one. He still finds it hard to believe their travails were mere ill luck.
• Mage Tower: The Sorceress' tower is built on an island in a deadly spore sea, walled with Anti-Magic, and contains incredibly advanced Magitek inside. It's the spaceship she used to travel to the planet, and she leaves in it when defeated.
• Minion Manipulated into Villainy: Crow's plan is to get her entire crew branded as 'Deadrunners' (pirates who sink ships, particularly hated by the authorities), so they can't abandon her once they discover her plan to sail to the Crimson Sea.
• Mundane Solution: How does Xisis cure Ann of her accuracy issues? Diagnose her with micropsia and give her prescription goggles.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Charlie manages to get out of a formal rich person party the same way Steris did: intentionally vomit on the table.
• Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious: Verdant spore vines are edible in a pinch when fully grown — they're not nutritionally complete and are disparaged as "weeds", but they beat starving to death on the ocean.
• The Pardon: Part of the reason Salay, Ann, and Fort help Tress is because the King's Mask could petition the king for a royal pardon for their piracy. Unfortunately for them, Tress isn't a member of the King's Mask. The crew does ultimately earn a pardon and more for driving the Sorceress off Lumar.
• Perpetual Frowner: The duke of the Rock is scowling almost all the time he is on page. Tress notes that she saw him smile only one time: during the punishment of a man who tried to escape the island. And even then, he showed far too many teeth.
• Pirate Girl: Most of the female characters, even Tress eventually, but especially Captain Crow.
• Punch-Clock Villain: The crew of the Crow's Song might be pirates, but they're pretty friendly aside from that. All but Crow and Laggart are even against killing and are fine with just taking a ransom fee.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Discussed. Most pirates try to avoid killing or sinking ships, because the authorities are lenient on theft.
• Nobody Poops: Averted. There's a story about a Tosher who has to go through the sewage of everyone in a castle and he even converses with the king while the latter is busy. Tress is mentioned to void her bowels twice as well.
• Red Shirt: The narration lumps all the unimportant rating crew members together under the term "Doug". Only one of them ends up dying, and its an event has a modest impact on both the characters and the narration
• Refuge in Audacity: Tress is surprisingly adept at this, when push comes to shove.
  • During her Darkest Hour when Crow was going to sell her into slavery to the dragon Xisis, Tress instead pretends that she actually came to sell Crow. The dragon is so amused by the obvious bluff that he decides to hear her out.
  • After Tress watches Hoid become an Elantrian, she commands the blatantly powerful demigod to handle the Sorceress for her, on the grounds that he's still her cabin boy.
• Rewatch Bonus: A lot of Huck's stories make more sense when you know that he's actually Charlie.
  • When Huck first meets Tress, he mentions that his usual strategy is to talk so much that his captors think he's not worth keeping. Exactly the strategy he used as Charlie.
  • Huck once knew a girl who was deaf but danced beautifully. One of the princesses Charlie was supposed to marry was deaf.
  • When Tress describes her island, Huck remarks that he came from a similar place. They're the same island.
  • Tress asks Huck if his family could talk like him, and he says yes. He did not say that they were rats like him. He also mentions that his family drove him out into the world before he was ready, which is what happened to Charlie.
• Shown Their Work: As Hoid notes, the spore seas act like water seas due to the process of fluidization, a completely real phenomenon where air blown through a loose medium (typically sand, but in this case spores) makes it act like water. Massive vents beneath the seas blow out air almost constantly, stirring the spores and giving them water-like tides and currents.
  Hoid: The science is really quite fascinating.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Fort's "Awakened tablet with Connection circuits" is blatantly some form of magically-created tablet computer, complete with predictive text. Riina takes this even further, creating full blown Investiture computers, AI, cameras, and even a rocket ship.
• Stealth Pun: Tress collects cups, and one of her favorites has a butterfly on it. A butterfly cup.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • After overcoming so many problems with brilliance and sheer determination, Tress finds herself at a loss for how to overcome the Sorceress's defenses and wonders what's wrong with her. The answer is incredibly mundane: she's tired. The narrator points out that while stories love to portray clever heroes as always ready for acts of cleverness, pushing an actual person too far will eventually wear them down.
  • You would think pirates would be a brutal bunch even in this lighthearted story, and you'd be right. While the pirate crew Tress joins are pretty nice, it's because they only just started the pirate lifestyle out of desperation. The one actual pirate, Captain Crow, is amongst the most vile characters in the Cosmere so far being a murderer and slave trader who goes out of her way to make everyone around her miserable and terrified.
• The Three Trials: To win Charlie back from the Sorceress, Tress has to cross the deadly Midnight Sea, get past the indestructible guardians of her island, and find a way into her magic-proof sealed tower. Subverted: the Sorceress is a petty sadist who didn't conceive of her defenses as a test and has no intention of honoring the victory.
• Through His Stomach: Tress managed to win over the Dougs of the Crow's Song by helping Fort prepare one meal a day, plus dessert.
• Tongue-Tied: The Sorceress' Curses prevent the victims from telling others that they're cursed or what the Curse Escape Clause is — if they try, they break down stuttering. Huck's caginess about his background is Foreshadowing.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Tress actually avoids this at every opportunity, carefully gathering information and planning her actions instead of jumping to conclusions. The narrator considers it one of the rarest traits for a story's hero.
• Trapped in Villainy: Crow's crew believe that the sinking of Oot's Dream marks them forever as deadrunners, meaning they have to survive through piracy alone and will be killed or executed if they ever falter. Crow invoked this to force them to obey her, and Tress ultimately defies it by getting them pardoned.
• The Unreveal: Hoid alters the terms of Charlie's curse so that it breaks when he writes Tress a poem. Hoid refuses to share what the poem was, saying it's only for Tress to know.
• Unreliable Narrator: Downplayed. While Hoid does relay the events more or less truthfully his sarcasm can slip in, such as the characters ALSO referring to the unimportant crewmembers as Dougs and claiming that everyone was impressed by nobles who got the most people killed.
• Uriah Gambit: When Charlie makes too much of a nuisance of himself, he is sent to sail the Midnight Sea and attempt to woo the sorceress who lives there. He is declared dead basically the second his ship is out of sight. It technically works as the Sorceress does capture him, but she decides to hold him for ransom and turn him into a rat rather than kill him.
• The Worf Effect:
  • When Hoid shows up, he's been driven insane. Tress soon learns this is because the Sorceress cursed him. This gets Played With though. It turns out Hoid let the Sorceress curse him as part of a bet. After his sanity is restored, he blocks another curse with his own spell. Having said that though, Hoid himself admits the Sorceress might be able to defeat him in a fair fight, but when Tress gives her the option to leave without a fight, she leaves the world entirely.
  • Captain Crow is Immune to Bullets and an incredibly skilled sharpshooter and fighter. The dragon defeats her by waving a claw in her direction and summoning cloth to hold her.

---