Unbound II is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the second fantasy anthology in Shawn Speakman's Unbound series. The first was filled with innovative, impressive work from writers more-and-less familair, so I had some high hopes for this one. And I tell you what, it delivers. There's an impressive breadth of talent on display here. And that talent is put in across a variety of stories, united, somewhat in their theme of freedom, authorial and character. I'm going to avoid delving in on a story by story basis, simply because there were so many stories, and so much content, and frankly, it would be easy to get lost in the weeds.
But for me, looking at an anthology, the first question is going to be, is there anything here I know I'm going to like? And you know what, in this case, there is. Shawn writes a story from his own universe. Mark Lawrence gives us a Jorg Ancrath story of all things. There's Jon Sprunk, running a tale in the same universe as his Shadow Son series. And there's a new Dune story from Herbert and Anderson. Thats a wealth of heavy hitters, in different spaces, and they'll probably delight with a new variant on their greatest hits.
As an aside, I thought Lawrence's story, Solomon, which included a sharply edged Ancrath, a baby, and a chest full of gold, was wonderful. Twined through with fraught emotional beats, hard choices, and more than a little of the old ultraviolence. Worth the price of admission on its own/ But I digress.
There's also stories from some fantastic writers trying out something new, rather than revisiting what they're known for. I particularly enjoyed Anna Smith-Spark's exploration of a knight who was reliant on her horse to get around, who lived the reality of the honourable knight-errant of the mind, while refusing to conform to the expectation of what a knight should look like. It was heartfelt, emotional, and, again, rather lethal. The same could be said of Anna Stephen's Heart-Eater, which packs so much depth of setting and emotional content into such a small space; both stories were an absolute joy, and cement the anthology as one which has some serious chops.
It also steps away from the sprawling epics common in SF&F to look at the personal; part of that comes across in the stories above. Even the Dune one is, at heart, character-driven. Adrian Tchaikovsky gives us Sandra, a story which is about relationships and technology and the way in which the future slowly builds out, though whether to a crescendo or a whimper is for you to decide. In any case it, and indeed the other stories in this collection, have a feeling of intimacy. Of looking at the constraints of a short story, and trying to bring an honesty to their stories within that space. Of saying, look here, there's power in emotion, there's pwoer in how we think of ourselves and why and in the way we let ourselves be or refuse to be defined. So lets talk about that. And lets do it with fae and lets do it with Harkonnen and lets do it with mermaids, of sorts, and lets do it with high tech and lets do it with magic, and you know what, lets wrap that bundle of stories up and say this is important.
Because you know what, there's a lot of stories here, and I mentioned a handful. There were some that didn't really hit for me, and some that were, you know, fine. But they were all trying to be free, to show us people and who they are and why and do it with the quiet stiletto of narrative truth. The stories feel real because they are true, and vice versa - even the ones I wasn't sold on.
So anyway. There's a lot here. Some of it will work for you. Some won't. But all of it will be trying to reach you, to make you understand, to make you feel, and feel free. And that's worth a lot.
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