Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection

by Brandon Sanderson
672 pgs

Brandon Sanderson is such a prolific writer, so much so, that at times it can feel like a challenge trying to keep up with all the different series he’s writing. Fortunately, they’re all great, so it’s a good challenge to face. But the challenge became even more daunting for me a few years ago when I learned of the Cosmere, the universe within which all of his stories take place. The Cosmere contains multiple solar systems and his different series take place in the different systems. When Sanderson began to include more details about the Cosmere, and the fact that the different systems were connected to each other, and that there were ways one could travel from one to the other, I realized that I needed to be paying closer attention as I read his books. Now I was no longer content to simply read his books for pleasure, now I needed to be watchful for references and clues to the bigger picture Sanderson has begun to reveal.

There’s the Selish System, where Elantris and The Emperor’s Soul take place, the Scadrian System, where his Mistborn series take place, the Taldain System, a system introduced for the first time in this book with White Sand, the Threnodite System, where Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell takes place, the Drominad System, where Sixth of Dusk occurs, and the Rosharan System, where his most ambitions series (Stormlight) occurs.

Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection is a collection of shorter fiction, with stories taking place throughout the Cosmere, in which Sanderson begins to reveal a little more of the interconnectedness between the different systems he's created, and he gives his readers a better idea of what's to come in the many years and books ahead. 

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