The second of Brandon Sanderson's secret projects written over the course of the Covid pandemic, and with this one it really comes through that these are passion projects - HIs enthusiasm for this story clearly shine through. Unfortunately, the other side of this is that both Tress and, to a greater extent, this story feel significantly less polished than his usual work. Sanderson's normal foibles are clearly present here, but without the polish which usually glosses over them: characters having a single expression which they constantly pull (eyes are rolling all over the place in this book), the prevalence of simple folk amazed by simple knowledge, and of course Sanderson's abiding love of capitalism as the fix to most of anyone's problems.

Sanderson spins a good story, as always - I don't know if he's capable of bad plotting - But nothing around the plot really worked for me. Granted, this story had an uphill struggle as it was dealing with my two least-favourite sci fi tropes: sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic (boring), and uniform cultural evolution (a dangerously simplistic way of seeing the world), but even from that starting point the story really did nothing to redeem itself for me. The writing is good enough and the characters are likeable enough that it would make a good children's book, but again I really can't recommend anything based on as dangerous a worldview as cultural evolution to children.