Brandon Sanderson’s Tress of the Emerald Sea hits bookstores April 4

Within the spring of 2022, Brandon Sanderson launched a Kickstarter marketing campaign to launch 4 new secret novels the writer had written after the COVID-19 pandemic started. The response broke all information. The marketing campaign reached its aim in lower than a day and finally totaled $41.7 million, turning into by far probably the most profitable Kickstarter marketing campaign so far.

Marketing campaign backers have began receiving their premium editions (and extra!) of the primary novel, Emerald Sea Tress this month of January. However for individuals who missed the marketing campaign, Tor Books is completely satisfied to announce that it’s going to solely launch retail editions of the Secret Initiatives three months after every premium version of Dragonsteel is distributed to Kickstarter backers!

Sanderson on his inspiration for TREE:

I began scripting this in secret, as a novel only for my spouse. She urged me to share it with the world – and alongside three different secret novels, with the assist of readers all over the world, it grew to become the most important Kickstarter marketing campaign of all time. I am thrilled to lastly deliver you this primary ebook: a unique sort of Brandon Sanderson story, a narrative I wrote when there have been no time constraints, no expectations, and no limits to my creativeness. Come be a part of the magic.

Emerald Sea Tress will arrive in your native favourite bookstore on April 4, 2023, and all four Secret Project books are available for pre-order now.

Try the commerce version cowl under, illustrated by Carlos Guimerawith lettering by Michael Graziolo.

And browse an excerpt!

#1 New York Instances Finest-selling writer Brandon Sanderson takes us deeper into the Cosmere universe with an enticing and gripping story that may enchantment to followers of The princess to be married.

The one life Tress has recognized on her native island in an emerald inexperienced ocean has been easy, with the straightforward pleasures of amassing mugs introduced by sailors from distant lands and listening to tales informed by her buddy Charlie. However when her father takes her on a journey to discover a bride and catastrophe strikes, Tress should board a ship and hunt down the Witch from the lethal Midnight Sea. Amid oceans of spores the place pirates abound, can Tress abandon her easy life and make her personal place by crusing a sea the place a single drop of water can imply prompt demise?

THE GIRL

I

In the midst of the ocean, there was a woman who lived on a rock.

It was not an ocean just like the one you imagined.

The rock was additionally not just like the one you imagined.

The lady, nevertheless, might be as you imagined him – assuming you imagined him as considerate, soft-spoken, and overly keen on amassing cups.

Males typically described the lady as having wheat-colored hair. Others referred to as it the colour of caramel, or generally the colour of honey. The lady questioned why males used meals so typically to explain ladies’s options. There was a starvation in these males that was greatest prevented.

In keeping with her, “gentle brown” was descriptive sufficient, though the shade of her hair was not her most attention-grabbing trait. It might be the unruliness of her hair. Each morning, she heroically tamed it with a brush and a comb, then muzzled it with a ribbon and a decent braid. But some strands nonetheless discovered a technique to escape and swayed freely within the wind, eagerly greeting everybody she handed.

The lady had been given the unlucky identify Glorf at start (do not choose, it was a surname), however her wild hair earned her the identify everybody knew her: Tress. This nickname was, in Tress’ estimation, her most attention-grabbing characteristic.

Tress had been introduced as much as possess a sure inalienable pragmatism. It is a frequent fault with those that reside on our lifeless islands from which they will by no means get out. When you find yourself greeted every day by a panorama of black stone, it influences your outlook on life.

The island was formed just like the twisted finger of an previous man, rising out of the ocean to level towards the horizon. It was made totally of barren black salt stone and was giant sufficient to assist a fairly sized city and a duke’s mansion. Though the locals referred to as the island the Rock, its identify on the maps was Diggen’s Level. Nobody remembered who Diggen was anymore, however he had clearly been a wise man, as he had left the Rock shortly after naming it and by no means returned.

Within the evenings, Tress would typically sit on her household’s porch and sip salty tea from one in all her favourite mugs whereas gazing on the inexperienced ocean. Sure, I did say the ocean was inexperienced. Additionally, he wasn’t moist. We’re getting there.

Because the solar set, Tress questioned in regards to the folks visiting the Rock on their ships. Not that anybody of their proper thoughts would contemplate the Rock a vacationer vacation spot. The black salt stone was crumbly and penetrated in every single place. It additionally made most sorts of agriculture not possible, finally contaminating any soil introduced in from off the island. The one meals the island produced got here from compost bins.

Whereas the Rock had main shafts that introduced in water from a deep aquifer – one thing that passing ships wanted – the tools that labored within the salt mines was belching a gradual stream of black smoke into the air. .

In abstract, the environment was gloomy, the terrain depressing and the views miserable. Oh, and did I point out the lethal spores?

Diggen’s Level was close to the Verdant Lunagree. The time period “lunagree”, it is best to know, refers back to the locations the place the twelve moons cling within the sky across the planet of Tress in oppressive, low stationary orbits. Giant sufficient to fill a 3rd of the sky, one in all twelve is all the time seen irrespective of the place you journey. Dominating your sight, like a wart in your eyeball.

The locals worshiped these twelve moons as gods, which we will all agree is way extra ridiculous than something you worship. Nevertheless, it is simple to see the place the superstition started, allowing for the spores – like coloured sand – that the moons dropped onto the earth.

They have been descended from lunagrees, and the Verdant Lunagree was seen some fifty or sixty miles from the island. It was as near a lunar accord as you may get – a big shimmering fountain of colourful, vibrant, and intensely harmful particles. The spores have crammed the world’s oceans, creating huge seas not of water, however of alien mud. Ships sailed on this mud like ships sail on water right here, and also you should not discover that uncommon. What number of different planets have You visited? Perhaps all of them sail on oceans of pollen, and your the home is the weirdest.

The spores have been solely harmful in case you moist them. Which was fairly an issue, contemplating what number of moist issues leak from human our bodies even when wholesome. The slightest little bit of water would trigger the spores to germinate explosively, and the outcomes ranged from uncomfortable to lethal. Breathe in a whiff of Verdant Spores, for instance, and your saliva would ship vines squirting out of your mouth or, in additional attention-grabbing instances, into your sinuses and round your eyes.

The spores might be rendered inert by two issues: salt or silver. Therefore why the folks of Diggen’s Level did not care terribly about how salty their water or meals tasted. They might educate their youngsters this crucial rule: salt and silver cease the killer. An appropriate little poem, in case you’re the sort of barbarian who likes indirect rhymes.

Both means, with the spores, the smoke, and the salt, it is maybe comprehensible why the king the duke served wanted a regulation requiring folks to remain on the Rock. Oh, he gave causes that concerned necessary navy phrases like “important personnel,” “strategic resupply,” and “pleasant anchorage,” however everybody knew the reality. The place was so inhospitable that even the smog discovered it miserable. Ships are visited periodically for repairs, to deposit waste for compost bins and to tackle new water. However everybody strictly obeyed the king’s guidelines: no inhabitant was to be kidnapped at Diggen’s Level. By no means.

And so Tress would sit on her steps within the night, watching the ships drift away as a column of spores fell from the lunagree and the solar emerged from behind the moon and crept in direction of the horizon. She was sipping salty tea from a cup with horses painted on it, and he or she was considering, There’s a magnificence at that, really. I like being right here. And I believe I will be fantastic to remain right here all my life.

Extract of Emerald Sea Tresscopyright © 2023 by Brandon Sanderson.