Warning: this article contains spoilers for the Mistborn series after the book Mistborn: The Final Empire.Brandon Sanderson’s multiversal epic, the Cosmere, is a titanic saga composed of many of his different book series and standalone novels. The Cosmere’s many worlds (and books) are connected by the long-ago death of the mysterious being Adonalsium, who was betrayed and killed by a coven of conspirators; Adonalsium shattered into sixteen Shards, each a fragment of the greater whole, and yet each with enough power to reshape reality.
While the book series Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive saga are the main focus of the Cosmere, Sanderson has also written numerous short stories that flesh out smaller details of the universe, whether it’s minor characters, worlds without Shards, or just fragmentary ideas that haven’t warranted a full novel yet. In 2016, he released Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collected, an anthology of nine short stories set on various worlds of the Cosmere, interspersed with essays and illustrations exploring the extensive magic system of worlds like Mistborn.
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White Sand
Taldain (White Sand)
The desert world of Taldain is home to the powerful Sand Masters, who can manipulate sand in fantastical ways; when a conspiracy results in their being slaughtered, the only survivor is Kenton, the youngest and weakest Sand Master, who must figure out how to keep himself alive when he can’t trust anyone. His only ally is the mysterious Khriss, a woman from Taldain’s strange Darkside, and she clearly has an agenda of her own.
“White Sand” is by no means a bad story, it just doesn’t have the same immediate sense of urgency and importance as the other stories in Arcanum Unbounded. Part of that is simply due to the incomplete nature of the text; “White Sand” is actually an older piece of writing than any other piece in the collection, as Sanderson finished the original manuscript of the book in 2001. The series was adapted into a three-volume graphic novel in 2016, which also has a preview in Arcanum Unbounded, and that seems much more lively than the original prose.
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It was recently announced that White Sand would get yet another release; in the author’s December 19 blog post detailing his progress on various projects over 2024, he discussed how he’s in the process of revising the text manuscript of White Sand, with an eye towards publishing it in 2026. “Updating 30-year-old-narratives is a big project,” he said in the post with his usual understatement, but hopefully the updated White Sand novel will sparkle on the page in a way that this excerpt of the original failed to.
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Allomancer Jak And The Pits Of Eltania
Scadrial (Mistborn)
The home of the Mistborn series, Scadrial is a planet that was until recently very hostile to life, but the events at the end of the first novel trilogy reshaped it to the benefit of the people that live there. Mistborn‘s Era 2 books show this new Scadrial, now home to a society fairly analogous to the United States in the 1800s, right down to “broadsheets,” the mass-produced newspapers.
Pieces of Jak’s adventures can also be found as interstitial pieces of the Era 2 Mistborn books
“Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eternia” is part of a serial story published in those broadsheets, detailing the larger-than-life exploits of the eponymous Allomancer Jak as he adventures across Scadrial, getting into trouble. It’s a hilarious story, partially because Jak is a wonderful parody of our own world’s pulp fiction action heroes like Doc Savage. Pieces of Jak’s adventures can also be found as interstitial pieces of the Era 2 Mistborn books, which further contrast the bloviating hero against the actual accomplishments of series protagonists Wax and Wayne.
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The Hope Of Elantris
Sel (Elantris)
The world of Sel was a depressing one at the outset of the novel Elantris, which showed the eponymous city rotting away, its formerly magical residents now cursed to a wasting, pathetic form of immortality. Thanks to that book’s heroes, though, Elantris and its residents were healed, and their phenomenal powers could again be used to help the world.
Written by Sanderson as a tribute to one of his wife’s students, “The Hope of Elantris” is a short but touching story.
“The Hope of Elantris” follows along with the events of the original novel, but through a flashback that focuses on a side character, Matisse, and her fight to save the Elantrian children during the novel’s climactic invasion of the city by the cruel Fjordell. Written by Sanderson as a tribute to one of his wife’s students, “The Hope of Elantris” is a short but touching story and an interesting glimpse at things that happened off-screen during the original book.
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The Eleventh Metal
Scadrial (Mistborn)
Another story set on Scadrial, “The Eleventh Metal” is a prequel story, set well before the events of the very first Mistborn novel, The Final Empire. While the original novels showed the character of Kelsier in his prime, a fully realized Mistborn with a plan to take down the cruel Lord Ruler, “The Eleventh Metal” is a glimpse at Kelsier in his youth.
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Apprenticing under the gruff Mistborn Gemmel, Kelsier helps his mentor attack a nobleman’s keep. There they find the noble has been experimenting on Kelsier’s fellow skaa in hopes of finding the legendary “eleventh metal,” a supposedly limitless source of power. After killing the nobleman and freeing the imprisoned skaa, Kelsier begins to formulate the plan that would eventually see him crossing blades with the Lord Ruler himself.
|
Known Allomantic Metals |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Physical Metals |
Mental Metals |
Enhancement Metals |
Temporal Metals |
|
Steel |
Zinc |
Aluminum |
Gold |
|
Iron |
Bronze |
Duralumin |
Electrum |
|
Pewter |
Brass |
Chromium |
Cadmium |
|
Tin |
Copper |
Nicrosil |
Bendalloy |
“The Eleventh Metal” is a great story, and it’s fantastic to see Kelsier at his most inexperienced. In the main Mistborn trilogy, he’s a seemingly untouchable figure, especially since we see him through the eyes of his own apprentice, Vin. Here, though, he’s a young man only just starting to heal from the horrible trauma that helped him awaken as a Mistborn, and he has yet to develop the signature flamboyance that made him such a charismatic leader of the Skaa Rebellion.
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The Emperor’s Soul
Sel (Elantris)
While set on the same planet as Elantris and “The Hope of Elantris,” “The Emperor’s Soul” explores a very different part of that world – the complex and bureaucratic Rose Empire. A Forger named Shai sits in Imperial prison for attempting to steal an artifact known as the Moon Scepter, but instead of being executed for her crimes, the Empire offers her an opportunity: forge the very soul of the Emperor, who has been languishing in a vegetative state from an assassin’s head wound, and she will go free.
“The Emperor’s Soul” is fantastic, and since so much of it specifically revolves around the magic of Forgery, it’s a wonderful glimpse at just how deeply fleshed-out Sanderson’s Cosmere magic systems are. It’s also chock-full of Easter eggs and other references to parts of the Cosmere; Shai herself, under a different name, eventually appears in the Era 2 Mistborn novels, where she continues to be an excellent and compelling character.
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Shadows Of Silence In The Forests Of Hell
Threnody
Threnody is one of the most dangerous worlds in the Cosmere, and “Shadows of Silence in the Forests of Hell” is the only story set there so far. The Forests of Hell are a twisted, dark place where shades lurk, waiting to suck the life out of those foolish enough to be out at night. In the story, the innkeeper Silence Montane, secretly a bounty hunter, must go into that very forest at night in hopes of apprehending a bounty that would let her finally pay off her debts, but a betrayal forces Silence to fight the bloodthirsty shades.
“Shadows of Silence” is fascinating, since Threnody has not appeared in any other Cosmere works, as the planet lacks a direct link to any of the other worlds. That means that the story is full of tantalizing implications of the horrible history of Threnody and its people, whose society is clearly teetering on the brink of collapse. Silence is a great protagonist – an accomplished bounty hunter and fighter, and yet those skills only matter to her as a way to keep her inn, and her daughter, safe.
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Sixth Of The Dusk
First Of The Sun
Little is known by the rest of the Cosmere about the world called First of the Sun by its inhabitants, other than how its jungles hide many dangers. Sixth of the Dusk, an Eelakin trapper, visits the island of Patji, where he breeds the magically-impowered birds called Aviar. Once arriving on Patji, he discovers the slaughtered members of a merchant company and the one survivor, a young woman named Vathi, who tells him that the merchants had come doing research with the help of the Ones Above, mysterious travelers from another world.
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As with any Cosmere story that shows a world not otherwise explored, “Sixth of the Dusk” is a gripping tale, and all the more thrilling given that the protagonist, Sixth of the Dusk, lacks the magical powers so many other Cosmere protagonists take for granted. His Aviar companions give him limited abilities of foresight, but otherwise, his skills are entirely his own, and he makes for a compelling viewpoint character.
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Edgedancer
Roshar (The Stormlight Archive)
The world of Roshar is as shaped by war as it is by the massive storms that sweep across it, and the people who live there are shaped by them in turn. Roshar is home to The Stormlight Archive‘s narrative, and unlike other stories in Arcanum Unbounded, which focus on events away from the plot’s movers and shakers, Edgedancer is a focal piece of the narrative, taking place between book two, Words of Radiance, and book three, Oathbringer.
Edgedancer‘s central character is the young girl Lift, who was introduced as a side character in Words of Radiance as she learned how to use her abilities as a Knight Radiant. Edgedancer sends Lift to the city of Yeddaw, where she tries to save other potential Knights Radiant from the man she knows as Darkness, who seeks to slaughter them before they can realize their powers. Along the way, she has another quest of equal import to her – eating all ten kinds of pancakes made in the city in the period known as the Weeping.
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Lift is a phenomenal character, who seemed unassuming enough in her first appearance in Words of Radiance. Yet it’s clear in Edgedancer and the novels after that she is indeed one of Brandon Sanderson’s favorite characters; this barely teenaged Knight Radiant has a unique perspective on the world and people, and it’s that perspective that allows her to so easily change from hilarious to poignant in the same conversation.
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Mistborn: Secret History
Scadrial (Mistborn)
Mistborn: Secret History was originally released as a standalone ebook in early 2016, but was included in print for the first time in Arcanum Unbounded. This novella contains major spoilers for Mistborn Era 1, as it reveals that although Kelsier did die in battle against the Lord Ruler in Mistborn: The Final Empire, death was only the beginning. Kelsier’s soul was trapped in the Well of Ascension, at least until Vin released the power there; then, traveling south, he worked to help Vin and Elend in their fight against Ruin from the Cognitive Realm where his spirit was trapped.
Secret History showed even more of this mysterious reflection of reality.
While the events of the Secret History caught fans by surprise, Brandon Sanderson had been planning this story all along, as evidenced by Kelsier’s return to mortal form in The Bands of Mourning. While some of The Stormlight Archive has detailed parts of the Cognitive Realm, Secret History showed even more of this mysterious reflection of reality and also confirmed fan theories that Kelsier was too stubborn to actually die.
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