Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn
core collection 1981 Thieves' World
Record
| First published | 1981 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | collection |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.86 (3,604 ratings, collected 2026-09-15) |
| Page count | 299 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780441795772 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
The second Thieves' World anthology returns to the fantasy city of Sanctuary, a haven for thieves, mercenaries, and magicians on the fringe of a fading empire, gathering new interlocking stories from multiple fantasy authors centered loosely around the Vulgar Unicorn, the seedy tavern that serves as the series' unofficial hub. With the tavern's shadowy former owner, One-Thumb, now gone, the city's underworld politics shift further, and the collection's individual tales follow a tavern-side observer, a midwife, a nobleman, a seer, a healer, a warrior, and a thief as their separate troubles ripple outward through Sanctuary's crowded streets. From hunts for magical artifacts and dangerous enchanted weapons to attempts to avenge old deaths and push back against a supernatural corruption creeping through the city, the stories together widen the shared world established in the first volume.
Where it sits
- Universe: Thieves' World
- Series: Thieves' World anthologies core; position 2 of 2 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Robert Lynn Asprin
- Author: Lynn Abbey
Notes
- From the series record (Thieves' World anthologies): Shared-world anthologies set in the fictional city of Sanctuary, created by Robert Lynn Asprin with Lynn Abbey as co-editor; contributors across the series included Poul Anderson, C.J. Cherryh, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andrew J. Offutt and others. Ten further original-run volumes (1982-1989) and a later 2002-onward relaunch exist but are not individually catalogued.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Thieves' World anthologies: position 2 of 2: previous Thieves' World (1979)
Sources
← Thieves' World dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.