[Contains spoilers for Tress of the Emerald Sea.]
People are made up of, among other things, the books they read. Not only do we (try to) become like our favorite characters, they become our favorites because we already share specific interests and experiences with them. A part of me exists in the women of The Stormlight Archive—in Shallan’s curiosity and her bad jokes; in Jasnah’s fierce protectiveness of her family; in Navani’s craving of appreciation for her work. Bits of me are also present in Isabella, the in-world author of The Memoirs of Lady Trent; in Lucy Carlyle from Lockwood and Co.; in Robin and Rami from Babel.
Then I read Brandon Sanderson’s Tress of the Emerald Sea, and for the first time it brought all those pieces together in a single character. The book gave me a sense of wholeness, a deep feeling of excitement and gratitude, for it’s a story that’s comfortingly familiar.
Every page of the book was a joy to read; I simply couldn’t put it down. I could have been Tress—and, given that humans have invented the concept of self-insert fan fiction, there is no reason I can’t be. But as a writer I tire of relating the story of my life over and over, of always being the storyteller rather than the listener. Tress’s book felt as if someone was saying to me, “We do see you, working for your family. We see that your worth isn’t attached to how much you stand out from others, that you had to grow up too soon.” To read Tress of the Emerald Sea was to receive acknowledgement for the story I’d lived but never found being told by anyone else. While I saw familiarity and even boredom, Brandon Sanderson saw potential for magic and adventure in a young girl who hadn’t seen much of the world, always considered her family in all decisions, and was on the whole quite content with her life.
They say that to wait is the most excruciating of life’s torments. “They” in this case refers to writers, who have nothing useful to do, so fill their time thinking of things to say. Any working person can tell you that having time to wait is a luxury.
Tress had windows to wash. Meals to cook. A little brother to watch. Her father, Lem, had never recovered from his accident in the mines, and though he tried to assist, he could barely walk. He helped Tress’s mother, Ulba, knit socks all day, which they sold to sailors, but with the expense of yarn they turned only a meager profit.
So Tress didn’t wait. She worked.
Chapter 4, The Son
Tress and I are similar in way too many respects; the one that stands out the most, even more than our shared responsibility-taking, economic standing, and fondness for tea, is her relationship with her family. She takes charge of their meals when she notices her mother giving up her own share of the food and going hungry as a result. She shares her heartbreak openly with her mother, Ulba. When she decides to go rescue Charlie, she talks to her parents first—and Lem and Ulba, in turn, listen to her and help her out. They respect her decisions—just like my parents do—and don’t patronize or dismiss her. When Tress gets her own ship, she sends for her family, bringing them along to wherever she’s headed next, because when it came to “seeking adventure in foreign oceans,” Hoid tells us, “Tress found that notion frightening. How could she leave her parents and brother?”
If I had been reading a physical copy of the book, this is where I would have underlined the entire paragraph, then made a curly bracket and written in capital letters: ME!!!!!!
As I’ve grown up, edging closer to the day when I’ll be married and move away, I’ve spent hours thinking (and crying) about the fact that I’ve already spent most of the total time I will get with my family. When I’ve questioned my mother about her own experience of this separation, she told me that one soon gets used to living with one’s partner and in-laws, and then when you do return to your former home for visits, you start longing to go back to your new place. I find it frightening how rarely this topic is discussed among women and in the media, and have pondered dozens of setups where I could be close to my family without them having to uproot their entire lives for me. I’ve been told on a couple of occasions to accept that this is just how things are—you spend over two decades with your parents and siblings, get married, then see them only a few times a year for the rest of their lives. To see Tress bringing her family along made me feel a little less ashamed, a little less out-of-place for mourning this eventual parting, and grieving the time that won’t be spent with my loved ones.
The Importance of Being Ordinary
As I’ve written before, all of us are worthy, and so are the things we make. It’s a difficult truth to remember, though, which is why we need to remind ourselves of that fact again and again. Sometimes, things get so hard that we doubt the effectiveness or worth of our own voice, our own words. We need someone else to show us not just what’s possible in the future, but that there’s enough magic and beauty in the lives we already lead, the people we already are. Reading Tress inspired me to try harder—for she represents at once both the person I am and the person I want to be—yet her story never made me feel like my life was lacking, or that I was inadequate.
So often, art focuses on trauma and suffering, and while those stories are needed, we also need stories of possibilities that do not require suffering or horrific loss in the name of narrative depth or character growth. Tress is ordinary, and to me that ordinariness was just as necessary; I rejoiced in it because it’s not portrayed as a problem to overcome.
“Absolutely!” she said, joining him in the hall, though she was strangely reluctant to leave her research. That was silly. She had no formal training in academics; her schooling had ended at basic reading and arithmetic. Surely she wasn’t secretly a scholar. A window-washing girl? If she’d been inclined toward research, she’d have realized it before.
The truth was, she’d simply never encountered a topic interesting enough—or dangerous enough—to engage her.
Chapter 37, The Scholar
At the same time, Tress is not a liability for not having any obvious special abilities. Her ordinary life and the things she did as part of her routine—cooking, cleaning, listening, being considerate—end up serving her quest instead of limiting her. Scrubbing the deck saves her from being dumped into the spore sea, while her resourcefulness in the kitchen endears her to the crew. She stays on the Crow’s Song even when she’s given the chance to escape. She thinks too much, as Hoid says, and feels too much, but retains some of her practicality too. Examples of her empathic nature are woven like a thread through the book; my favorite instance is when, realizing that the dragon Xisis cannot help her, Tress uses the boon she’s earned to help her friends instead, including procuring a much-needed pair of glasses for the assistant cannonmaster, Ann. Earlier, despite internally grappling with the pain of possible loss and failure, Tress was sensitive enough to understand Ann’s longing and frustration and was able to give her the gift of firing the cannon (although, of course, Tress being Tress, she would not think of it that way). She could have been bitter or disappointed at that moment, but she wasn’t.
Tress’s ordinariness, therefore, is never limiting; rather, her core skills and traits only strengthen as the story progresses, while also giving way to the development of new qualities, such as her growing assertiveness and a surprising dexterity in handling spores.
Rethinking the Heroic
“Those stories always leave something out,” Tress said. “It’s really not a problem that someone needs to be saved. Everyone needs help. It’s hard to be the person who makes trouble, but the thing is, everyone makes trouble. How would we help anyone if nobody ever needed help?” […] “The part the stories leave out,” Tress said as the Sorceress’s runes formed into a vibrant wall, “is everything that comes before. You see, I’ve discovered that it’s all right to need help. So long as you’ve lived your life as the kind of person who deserves to be rescued.”
Chapter 64, The Hero
Tress, over the course of the book, grows because of and along with the crew. Interacting with them helps her understand new perspectives on living—Fort’s trades, Salay’s determination, and even Crow’s ruthlessness. And it’s because of this new family she creates that she is able to rescue Charlie. She doesn’t send the Sorceress away from the planet—they all do.
In this, Tress’s story deviates from the familiar narrative of the individual hero—who rises above the side characters and must face the climactic test or showdown on their own—which also makes this a necessary book; a refreshing change in our storytelling that feels more and more crucial when we’re all facing problems that need to be solved through collaboration and communal effort. The real world was never made for lone heroes anyway, and it’s always the ordinary, everyday people who come together and put in the work who ultimately make a difference—be it fighting the climate crisis, supporting elderly neighbors during a pandemic, or helping a young girl rescue the man she loves.
Buy the Book
Tress of the Emerald Sea
