Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter is a fantasy novel written by American author Brandon Sanderson. It is part of the Cosmere fictional universe and the third book of Sanderson's "Secret Projects" Kickstarter campaign. It was exclusively released on July 1, 2023, by Dragonsteel Entertainment to Kickstarter backers.

Plot
The story takes place on planet Komashi, a world enshrouded by a dark mist. In Kilahito, a city that exists within the shroud, humans are kept warm and provided light by the hion lines, magenta or blue lines of concentrated power (Investiture, a common aspect in many of Sanderson’s works). The shroud regularly produces coherent nightmare creatures that can hurt or kill humans. Nikaro is a Painter, a group of people that use sumi-e painting to trap and disable the nightmares, thereby preventing them from hurting more people. He lives by himself, and tries not to interact with the other Painters. Yumi is a yoki-hijo, a woman with the ability to call and bind spirits to do various tasks for the humans in her country. After Yumi is contacted by one of the spirits, who begs her to help them, she and Nikaro swap bodies when they go to sleep. When Nikaro is in her body, she exists as a disembodied spirit who can see what he really looks like. When Yumi is in Nikaro's body, it changes shape to look like her, while Nikaro exists as a disembodied spirit. They are taught how to do the other person’s job while in their body, and Nikaro gets better at stacking rocks while Yumi makes friends with other Painters. Scholars arrive in Yumi’s village that have a machine that can summon spirits. Nikaro and Yumi suspect that there is something suspicious about these scholars, and they snoop around, searching for information. It is then revealed by the narrator, Hoid (a figure that appears in most of Sanderson’s books) that Yumi’s country has been controlled by a machine, called the Father Machine, which erases everybody’s memories after each day, and make them live the same day again, and has been doing this for hundreds of years. Yumi and Nikaro successfully defeat the Father Machine, and though Yumi briefly dies, she comes back to life as a Cognitive Shadow.

Characters

 * Yumi
 * One of the story's main protagonists and heroine. She is a yoki-hijo, a woman with the ability to call and bind spirits. She is from a land where the ground burns to the touch and life can exist only near the geysers that provide the only source of water.


 * Nikaro / Painter
 * One of the story's main protagonists and hero. He is a nightmare painter, person with the ability to capture nightmares in a painting, rendering them harmless. He is from Kilahito, a city enveloped in the shroud of mist.


 * Hoid
 * The narrator of the story. For most of the story, he is a coat rack in Design's noodle shop.


 * Design
 * A cryptic (or liespren) that is bonded to Hoid. When Hoid becomes a coat rack, she decides to open up a noodle shop until he changes back to normal.

Publication
In spring 2022, Brandon Sanderson announced a Kickstarter campaign of "Secret Projects" to publish four secret and brand-new novels written during the COVID-19 pandemic. The campaign reached its goal within a day, and accumulated a total of $41.7 million. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter is the third of the Secret Projects and is part of Sanderson's fictional Cosmere universe. The novel is loosely inspired by the Hikaru no Go manga and is narrated by Hoid, a recurring character who has appeared in multiple Cosmere series novels.

Kickstarter campaign backers received premium editions of the novel published by Dragonsteel Entertainment on July 1, 2023 and a standard hardback edition published by Tor Books was officially released on October 3, 2023.