Critical Role: The Mighty Nein – Stories Untold – Review

Come experience The Mighty Nein from the perspective of the many diverse characters who cross their paths.

The stories continue to flow from the world of Exandria. This month sees the release of Critical Role: The Mighty Nein – Stories Untold, a collection of nine tales that follow various “side characters” who have crossed paths with The Mighty Nein for better or worse over the course of their adventures. For those unfamiliar, The Mighty Nein is the adventuring party featured in Critical Role’s second campaign, set about a decade after the events of the first campaign.

As with the previous entry in the series, Vox Machina – Stories Untold, each story takes place before, during, or after a pivotal moment in the story of the Mighty Nein and how that moment affects a character who has encountered or is about to encounter the group.

Readers who haven’t experienced Critical Role’s second campaign don’t need to worry about feeling lost when going through this book. The authors take careful steps to present the stories in a way that anyone going in blind will not feel lost. Of course longtime viewers will notice plenty of Easter Egg references to various campaign moments, but newcomers will like the story too.

One thing I love about these stories is how they grow off of previously told encounters. For instance, one tale follows Essek Thelyss, a fan favorite character, after he’s had dinner with The Mighty Nein. While the campaign naturally stayed with the Nein after Essek left, this tale follows Essek to his home where we get to see his thoughts on what is happening in his life.

It’s interesting to see how these stories can alter what we already knew about some of these characters. Since these stories are considered canon, one can read a chapter, find the point where that character actually appeared in the campaign and realize “Oh, so this is what the character was thinking and feeling. This explains so much.” I deeply appreciate that this is how Critical Role goes about expanding on the world of Exandria. It would be so easy for the company to release neat paragraphs explaining what character A or character B was up to at a certain point in time. It’s so much more interesting to get a fully-fledged adventure that gets us inside these character’s heads, giving a better understanding of why they are the way they are when the Mighty Nein encounter them.

There’s also a great variety in how the stories are presented. As with the previous entry, most of the stories are in a traditional narrative format, one includes verse, and one is even presented as a graphic novel. The variety in presentation makes exploring the stories that much more fun, though even if they were all presented the same way, the stories would still be entertaining.

There aren’t enough words to describe how packed with detail each story in The Mighty Nein – Stories Untold is. There are, as mentioned earlier, Easter Eggs sprinkled everywhere. What really interested me is seeing some iconic moments told from a different point of view, like a fight Beauregard Lionett goes through early in the campaign after the group comes to the City of Beasts for the first time. Seeing these scenes from another angle will surely encourage many to go back to the original campaign and examine it with the new information added to it.

Fans of Critical Role will find plenty to love in this collection of tales. And for fantasy readers new to Exandria, this collection is a good way to dip ones toes into the story. I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing a different side of the story of The Mighty Nein and I highly recommend picking this book up.