Unfettered

Tales By Masters of Fantasy

By: Terry Brooks, Patrick Rothfuss, Robert Jordan, Jacqueline Carey, R.A. Salvatore, Naomi Novik, Shawn Speakman - editor, Peter V. Brett

Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Marc Vietor, Bronson Pinchot, Jay Snyder

Length: 20 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

You define life or it defines you. In Shawn Speakman’s case, it was both. Lacking health insurance and diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011, Shawn quickly accrued a massive medical debt that he did not have the ability to pay. That’s when New York Times best-selling author Terry Brooks offered to donate a short story that Shawn could sell to help alleviate those bills - and suggested he ask the same of his other writer friends. Unfettered is the result: An anthology built in order to relieve that debt, featuring short stories by some of the best fantasy writers in the genre.

Twenty-three tales comprise this incredible collection, and as the title suggests, the writers were free to contribute whatever they wished. Here is the table of contents:

• Foreword by Patrick Rothfuss
• Introduction: On Becoming Unfettered
• Imaginary Friends by Terry Brooks
• How Old Holly Came to Be by Patrick Rothfuss
• The Old Scale Game by Tad Williams
• Game of Chance by Carrie Vaughn
• The Martyr of the Roses by Jacqueline Carey
• Mudboy by Peter V. Brett
• The Sound of Broken Absolutes by Peter Orullian
• The Coach with Big Teeth by R. A. Salvatore
• Keeper of Memory by Todd Lockwood
• Heaven in a Wild Flower by Blake Charlton
• Dogs by Daniel Abraham
• The Chapel Perilous by Kevin Hearne
• Select Mode by Mark Lawrence
• All the Girls Love Michael Stein by David Anthony Durham
• Strange Rain by Jennifer Bosworth
• Nocturne by Robert V. S. Redick
• Unbowed by Eldon Thompson
• In Favour with Their Stars by Naomi Novik
• River of Souls by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
• The Jester by Michael J. Sullivan
• The Duel by Lev Grossman
• Walker and the Shade of Allanon by Terry Brooks
• The Unfettered Knight by Shawn Speakman

  With the help of stalwart friends and these wonderful short stories, Shawn has taken the gravest of life’s hardships and created something magical. Unfettered is not only a fantastic anthology in its own right, but it’s a testament to the generosity found in the science fiction and fantasy community—proof that humanity can give beyond itself when the need arises. After all, isn’t that the driving narrative in fantasy literature?

©2013 Shawn Speakman (P)2013 Audible Inc.

Great stories from great authors

Most stories are short stories based in the authors worlds. Worth getting it. Nice to hear authors I was not familiar with.

relationship status: ...it's complicated

Critiquing anthologies is equivalent to changing your Facebook status to "it's complicated." Some of the authors who contributed to this anthology of short stories are among my favorites. Some, I've never heard of. And sadly, some are among my least favorite authors in the fantasy genre. Indeed, the result is a wildly disparate opinion of the stories. Many were great, some were less great, and a few were terrible, to me.

To each their own, but the Eldon Thompson story had me on the edge of my seat yearning for more. What happens to Chronus?! I'd never heard of Eldon Thompson before and I eagerly await his first trilogy being delivered Monday so I can read it.

Brandon Sanderson is my favorite living author (Robert Jordan, my favorite deceased) and I wasn't thrilled with the story humanizing Demandred in River of Souls. But that is me. It doesn't FEEL like it fit with what we've seen of Demandred in the few moments we had seen him leading up to the Tarmon Gaidin. Maybe that's why Brandon didnt include it in the series. Nonetheless, it is excellently delivered and does reveal a great insight to Demandred's motivations/history leading up to his part in the Last Battle. (no spoilers)

But speaking of delivery, Terry Brooks is also one of my favorite authors. His story here fell flat, to me. It wasn't quite Richard and Kahlan quality. And in that story at about 18 hours 12 minutes, there is a serious flub in the reading. It was like the narrator messed up and recorded his practice session reading the book without filters and sound proofing/editing. He reads the same couple sentences like 3 times. Kinda freaked me out for a minute. Thought it was supposed to be like a change in tone or something, so I listened to it a couple times, but the presentation just continued and he reads the same passage with the sound editing and continues on in his original voice for the character. Weird.

So, yeah. There's some good, some bad, and not really any ugly, but I really wasn't impressed with a couple of the author's contributions.

I enjoyed them all!

Famous and familiar authirs pulled me into the desire to read this book and there-in I found new writers to seek out and become familiar wuth!
Excellect read!

a collection of short stories

for me there were only two good stories in this collection.
River of souls could be good enough to be a stand alone to the WoT universe.
The unfettered knight makes you curious and want to read more

A Collection of Tales

Some are good, some are not, some are so so. Some are even available elsewhere. The cause is worthy and the value good.

Quite Enjoyable

An overall enjoyable collection of stories from talented authors and narrators. An enjoyable aid to multitasking.

Short review of short stories

The performances are good and the stories are some good and some not so good. I think that the good outweighs the bad and it introduces listeners to new authors.

A lot of fun, great if you only have 10-15 minutes

An excellent conglomeration of stories, I really enjoyed the performances by the narrators, and the stories were all worth at least one listen, some are worth an extra listen. Simply put, and to avoid spoilers, I liked it...check it out.

A Mixed Bag

Several of the stories are beautiful, amazingly well written, and powerful. Others...not so much. Still others seemed very out of place in the anthology, but considering how it came to be, is understandable.

The Sound of Broken Absolutes, The Unfettered Knight, and Every Girl Loves Michael Stein are must reads/listens, IMO.

Others like Dogs are good, but a complete break in genre compared to the rest of the stories. There were a couple that were just plain bad in my opinion, a few that were meh. But there's enough really good stuff to make it worth your while.

The voice acting for IDC was incredibad.

Some of the voice acting choices were extremely questionable (IDC was just plain terrible!), and one of the stories, like, the editing was so bad, the voice actor speaks several of the same lines over and over in different tones, with different setups (e.g. Too much echo, not enough echo, bad quality, oh here's one that works). -- MORE THAN ONCE -- Iirc, it's near the end, the one with the druid talking to the dead or whatever. -- Like did anyone even edit this before slapping it up on Audible?? /smh

You can do better guys. Do better.