Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection

With Oathbringer's release being a few months away, I figured it was a good time to brush up on my cosmere knowledge. I had forgotten how fun it can be to play in Sanderson's worlds. I enjoyed the stories I've already read a lot more this time through (especially The Emperor's Soul) and the others left me wanting more. Except, perhaps, Edgedancer. That one was my least favorite, mostly because I still find Lift very annoying—although she did have some good, serious moments. (I really hope she doesn't get her own book; I don't think I could take it.)

Khriss' notes were great, too—I'll take anything that makes the cosmere feel more real. The postscripts were also a treat. Sanderson just gives and gives, and I love it.

Sheesh!

Sometimes I make bad decisions... like putting off a so-called short story collection by Sanderson for YEARS after it was published because I'm more of a fan of his big novels rather than in-between stuff.

What I should have remembered is Sanderson's penchant for writing... and writing... and writing. His short stuff is usually nothing like short stuff. There are two short NOVELS in this "collection". Good ones, too. Like the secret history of Mistborn that ties up all the events of the first trilogy from the Cognitive Realm. :) SO Good.

Or, even better, a short novel based in the Stormlight Archive world. With a certain always-hungry 10-year-old Knight Radiant proving to be just as impulsive and LUCKY as elsewhere. I'm LOVING the show more big plot additions and twists showing up here in the grand scheme of Sanderson's Epic. :) It's actually kinda necessary to read this. It ain't no fluff piece. Serious changes happen here.

So am I glad to read it?

Amazingly so. :)

Oh, yeah, and there's a few others that are fantastic in here, but they're re-reads for me. Like Sixth of the Dusk and Emperor's Soul. But for Emperor's Soul, I really didn't mind re-reading. That one is really good. It was when it came out and it's the same now. REALLY GOOD. :)

As for the rest, they're all quite interesting and span 6 worlds of Sanderson's Cosmere. I particularly liked the one with Sand. :) It has all of Sanderson's goodness with rule-based magic. :)

Worth it? It's not really something you can miss.

HOWERVER, if you're just wanting to read [b:Secret History|28698036|Secret History (Mistborn, #3.5)|Brandon Sanderson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1453756231s/28698036.jpg|48896020], know that the entire thing is duplicated in this. Arcanum Unbounded is a completionist's dream. show less

I’m a huge fan of pretty much everything Brandon Sanderson writes. I think it’s especially cool that many of his books are set on different planets in the same universe (the “Cosmere”), and that he plans to connect them all into an overarching story in the future. So when I found out that there was a Cosmere short fiction collection coming out, I was really excited to get it (even though I’ve already read many of the stories in it.)

First, I’ll talk about the book’s structure. I thought it would just be organized like a regular short story collection, but it actually has more. There are in-universe write ups (written by Khriss, the same woman who writes the Ars Arcanum at the end of all Brandon’s other books) about each show more planetary system featured in the book and how the magic there works. I’ve read a lot of Cosmere theories and interviews by Brandon about the Cosmere, and there’s quite a bit of information in these that has not been covered anywhere yet. Also, there are gorgeous illustrations for each story, and postscripts by Brandon about how the story came to be.

There’s one new novella in this book that has never been published before – Edgedancer, which is set in the world of the Stormlight Archive and features Lift, who we’ve met in an interlude in Words of Radiance. The Stormlight Archive is probably my favorite series by Brandon, so I was particularly excited to read this story, and of course it did not disappoint. It offers great moments of character growth, and it seems like it will be important to understand how a particular character’s attitude changes between Words of Radiance and the upcoming third book. Plus, Lift is a great character and I’d love to keep reading about her. Also, we see a few new things about Roshar, I wasn’t expecting more worldbuilding and answers from such a short story. My only complaint is that now I really, really cannot wait a year for the next book.

There were two other stories that were new to me, although they have been published previously in the Mistborn RPG books – The Eleventh Metal and Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania. They were fun stories, I enjoyed The Eleventh Metal a bit more because it featured Kelsier, and who doesn’t love Kelsier? Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania was a nice homage to pulp adventure, though.

I did reread all the stories I’d read previously as well. I absolutely love The Emperor’s Soul, I think it’s a really great standalone novella, and the fact that it’s set in the same world as Elantris and that it ties into the Cosmere just makes it better. The Hope of Elantris is a very simple story, but it’s cute, and it’s nice to see some of the backstory of what secondary characters were up to during the climax of Elantris. Mistborn: Secret History is pretty cool, I think it’s one of the first ones to actually delve directly into what’s going on with the Cosmere a little bit. I don’t want to say too much about it because even the protagonist’s name is a spoiler.

I guess White Sand will be new to a lot of readers, but it’s one of Brandon’s unpublished books that you can email him to get a copy of, and I’ve done that. It’s being published as a graphic novel series now, and the book excerpts both the graphic novel and the beginning of the unpublished book. I was afraid that the excerpt wouldn’t be satisfying enough by itself, but I think it manages to tell a good and complete story.

I first read Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell in George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’ anthology Dangerous Women, and I love it. Threnody is a fascinating world, and the characters are different from the ones Brandon usually writes – darker and more serious. Sixth of the Dusk also has a very un-Brandon-like protagonist (someone who has trouble articulating himself), and the world is in a very interesting period as it evolves into the industrial age, prodded along by spacefaring humans. I think both of these stories are the most atmospheric in the book and I’d love to hear more from their world and characters in the future.

Overall, I’d highly recommend this collection. I think most of the stories would work for someone unfamiliar with Brandon Sanderson’s other work and the Cosmere just as well – the only ones I’d be iffy about are Mistborn: Secret History, which is set during the original Mistborn trilogy and probably doesn’t have much impact without reading it, and The Hope of Elantris, which is likewise set during Elantris. show less

Arcanum Unbounded is a collection of stories set in the various worlds that Brandon Sanderson has created so far. Each story has a title page that states which novels this book relates to, so that you can proceed at your own risk or wait to read the novel first (for example, “The Hope of Elantris” portrays a scene that is off-screen in Elantris and will likely not make sense unless you’ve read the novel first). I read all but one of the stories in this collection; the group read I’m doing skipped the excerpt of White Sand because we’re planning to read that one later. (It will be a tricky one to do because the books are out of print, it looks like. But there does seem to be an abridged audio drama.) All of them were very good, show more so this is worth keeping and dipping into as you proceed through the Cosmere.

Capsule thoughts on the other stories (I’ve already mentioned “The Hope of Elantris” and “White Sand”):

“The Emperor’s Soul” is set in the world of Elantris but with magic reminiscent of Soulcasting (from the Stormlight Archives) in the world of Roshar. The story focuses on Shai, an artist who is tasked with creating a “soulstamp” to retrieve the soul of the emperor after a catastrophic assassination attempt basically left him with a traumatic brain injury. Soulstamps are a really cool idea.

There are a couple of Mistborn backstory pieces: “The Eleventh Metal” shows how Kelsier got his Mistborn training, and “Mistborn: Secret History” basically picks up a moment toward the end of Mistborn: The Final Empire and tells another story that runs in the background to The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages.

From Mistborn Era 2 (which I haven’t read yet but won’t be getting to for a while with the group read, so I felt comfortable proceeding with the risk of minor spoilers), “Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes Twenty-Eight Through Thirty” was my favourite of the collection. It’s written in the style of a pulp adventurer’s self-aggrandizing account of his exploits that have been annotated by his long-suffering deputy/editor with snarky footnotes. For example, Jak writes: “Almost invisible, I discovered it only by touch.” His deputy comments: “Yes, according to the way he wrote that sentence, he turned invisible for one line. No, he won’t let me change it.”

A couple of spookier stories: “Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell” has excellent atmosphere, and I liked how the protagonist was a middle-aged woman. “Sixth of the Dusk” is another great story with some intriguing bird creatures that provide magic powers.

The final story is a novella, Edgedancer, that takes place between Words of Radiance and Oathbringer (books 2 and 3 of the Stormlight Archives). I had forgotten who the protagonist was (because they are introduced at the end of Words of Radiance, if I’m remembering correctly), but I eventually figured out who they were. show less

Sanderson writes well. His pacing is good, and the motivations of his characters are clear enough, but I find that the more of his stuff I read, the less I'm taken with the fictional universe he's invented. It's imaginative and creative and all that, but not very, well, human. The magic system he has constructed for his fantasy novels includes godlike 'shards' whose conflicts with one another tend to trivialize the actions of the human characters. It's as if the people are game pieces, manipulated and pushed around for the shards' strategic advantage, which makes the stories, especially in this collection, seem rather a game of billiards told from the point of view of the balls.

This collection of short shorties and novellas ventures to various locations within Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere. Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection contains nine pieces of varying lengths that add to various worldbuilding of several series or introduce new worlds in Sanderson’s shared universe.

Of the nine stories featured in this collection, I had read three already due to being published novellas (The Emperor’s Soul, Mistborn: Secret History, and Edgedancer), so the other six pieces were my focus in reading this book. While the short “The Hope of Elantris” is a nice additional scene that takes place during the climax of the novel and the prose draft of “White Sand” of the prologue and chapter 1 of Volume One of the show more graphic novels, these are both the weakest pieces in the collection. The other four are simply fantastic parts of the overall Cosmere from how Kelsier’s crusade began in “The Eleventh Metal”, to a funny pulp adventure in Mistborn’s Second Era with Allomancer Jak, and introduces two new worlds in Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell and Sixth of the Dusk. Also included before the stories for each planetary system are essays about said system written by Kriss of White Sand fame and to one’s overall knowledge of how the Cosmere physically exists.

Overall, Arcanum Unbounded is a very good book for any Brandon Sanderson fan who wants to collect all the stories taking place in this vast universe.

The Emperor’s Soul (5/5)
The Hope of Elantris (3.5/5)
The Eleventh Metal (4/5)
Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltantia, Episodes Twenty-Eight Through Thirty (5/5)
Mistborn: Secret History (3.5/5)
White Sand (3.5/5)
Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell (4.5/5)
Sixth of the Dusk (4/5)
Edgedancer (5/5) show less

A collection of stories set in Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere, with a series of prefaces about the various solar systems that these stories take place in.

I approached the collection with muted enthusiasm, as I am more invested in characters from his novels than characters from shorter stories and I am much more interested in Sanderson’s individual stories than I am in Cosmere as an epic whole.

So I was surprised. The information about the different worlds was interesting, and I liked each story I read more than the one before. The two Mistborn stories I hadn’t read were amusing.

I really enjoyed the extract from the graphic novel White Sand - graphic novels are not my preferred medium but I want to read the rest of it now. “Sixth of show more the Dusk”, about a solitary trapper who lives on a dangerous island, was gripping. And Edgedancer, about a minor character from Stormlight Archive who I barely remember, was awesome.

(I didn’t reread the other three stories I’d read previously, but if the book hadn’t been due back at the library, I would have.) show less