A special five story preview of Shawn Speakman’s epic fantasy anthology Unfettered will be released at Phoenix Comicon this Memorial Day weekend. This week, we’re taking a spoiler-free look at all five stories, many featuring new glimpses of our favorite fantasy worlds.

I read Terry Brooks’s Shannara trilogy when I was pretty young, and if I’m being honest, I don’t remember them all that well. But I do remember how much I enjoyed reading them. I remember liking Allanon best and imagining that he would appear at my house one day and tell me that I was descended from a magical line of elves. I remember being inspired by the idea that a magical world could be our distant future, rather than a mythic past, and using colored beads as my elfstones.

I wish I had gotten my hands on Terry Brooks' short story “Imaginary Friends” back then, too, because I would have adored it.

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I was actually already through two-thirds of Tina Connolly's Ironskin, before I realized that I was reading a fantasy version of Jane Eyre. Of course, to anyone paying attention, this fact is obvious; the story centers around protagonist Jane Eliot, who comes from London to a country house on the moor to become a governess to the daughter of Edward Rochart. I suppose I can only plead the fact that I was so caught up in the magic of Connolly's world that I hardly noticed anything else. The fey of this magical England are mysterious and imaginative, and if I have any complaint about them, it is that I wanted more.

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I’ve always enjoyed seeing my favorite novels (or even pieces of them) portrayed in a visual medium. Normally that would be in movies or on television, but cover art, fan art, and other portrayals are also great for experiencing other people’s conception of the characters and places in the stories you love. I find it interesting to see how other people imagine things differently than I do, especially on the occasions when I am surprised by something that I actually like better than the way I imagined it. And while I knew I would probably not adopt Hope Larson’s depictions of Charles Wallace, Calvin, and Meg as my own, I couldn’t wait to see what she had done with one of my favorite books from childhood in A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel.

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I was lucky enough to score an advance reader copy of Kendare Blake’s Anna Dressed in Blood at last year’s Tor.com meetup and loved it, so I jumped at a chance to read and review its sequel, Girl of Nightmares, which comes out today! Girl of Nightmares is just as clever, thoughtful, and creepy as its predecessor, with the added bonus of extending the first novel’s mythology in interesting new ways.

[Read more! (Spoilers for Anna Dressed in Blood)]

Okay, we know that The Lord of the Rings movies were long, especially with the extended versions, but Peter Jackson still managed to keep each single book down to a single corresponding film. So why, then, can he not even fit The Hobbit into two movies, but has to make it three? I have a few theories.

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When I picked up Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone, I never bothered to read the back flap or even half the prologue. I am generally not a fan of prologues, but when I finished the book and read the epilogue I had to go back and pick up what I had missed, because they bracketed the story so perfectly. And as Shadow and Bone surprised me with its prologue, so it surprised me with the skill of its narration, the endearing qualities of its characters, and the strength of its world. It seemed at first glance like the kind of book I would like, but it turned out to be the kind of book that I love.

[Two orphans, a boy and a girl]