Legion: Skin Deep

by Brandon Sanderson, Oliver Wyman (Read by)

Overview

Brandon Sanderson is one of the most significant fantasists to enter the field in a good many years. His ambitious, multi-volume epics (Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive) and his stellar continuation of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series have earned both critical acclaim and a substantial popular following. In Legion, a short, distinctly contemporary novella filled with suspense, humor, and an endless flow of invention, Sanderson revealed a startling new facet of his singular narrative talent. In the stunning sequel, Legion: Skin Deep, that talent is on full display.

Stephen Leeds, AKA ''Legion',' is a man whose unique mental condition allows him to generate a multitude of personae: hallucinatory entities with a wide variety of personal characteristics and a vast array of highly specialized skills. As the new story begins, Leeds and his "aspects" are hired by I3 (Innovative Information Incorporated) to recover a corpse stolen from the local morgue. But there's a catch. The corpse is that of a pioneer in the field of experimental biotechnology, a man whose work concerned the use of the human body as a massive storage device. He may have embedded something in the cells of his now dead body. And that something might be dangerous... What follows is a visionary thriller about the potential uses of technology, the mysteries of the human personality, and the ancient human need to believe that death is not the end. Legion: Skin Deep is speculative fiction at its most highly developed. It reaffirms Sanderson's place as one of contemporary fiction's most intelligent - and unpredictable - voices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781531877170
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	09/20/2016
Series:	Stephen Leeds Series , #2
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Brandon Sanderson is an American fantasy and science fiction writer. He is famous for his high fantasy novels including the Mistborn series and The Stormlight Archive. Sanderson's other books include The Rithmatist, Tress of the Emerald Sea, The Sunlit Man, and more. For teens he has written the Reckoners, Skyward, and Alcatraz series and for young readers he wrote the Evil Librarians series. Additionally, Brandon Sanderson completed Robert Jordan's epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time. He also writes graphic novels and short stories. Sanderson lives in American Fork, Utah with his wife and three children.

Editorial Reviews

10/06/2014
The quest for a stolen corpse in an alternate present-day U.S. dominates this sequel to 2012’s Legion. Yol Chay, owner of Innovation Information Incorporated, sends investigator Stephen Leeds in search of Panos Maheras, a researcher whose body may hold the key to stopping a well-intentioned but disastrous project to store computing data in human cells. Leeds musters his corporeal friends and 47 personalities, called aspects, to investigate amid pursuit by Zen Rigby, a hired assassin working for rival high-tech company Exeltec. Continuing the theme of Legion, Sanderson explores Leeds’s efforts to understand his independent-minded aspects and his need for them. Discussions of quantum physics and the infinity of time lend a slightly contrived profundity to Leeds’s examination of reality and illusion, as he muses, “I’m not crazy, I’m compartmentalized.” Alas, Sanderson fails to take this debate into the broader world; the sometimes flighty, sometimes assertive aspects are intriguing, but the conceptual basis of the work is never developed beyond sitcom level. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

11/15/2014
Stephen Leeds (last seen in the 2012 novella "Legion") has a condition that causes him to hallucinate a variety of uniquely useful companions. Of his many "aspects" are a trained soldier, a psychological expert, and a librarian, all of whom help him solve problems, even if they are probably the manifestations of a deep schizophrenia. These aspects make Leeds a rather versatile intelligence agent, and in this outing he is hired to find out who has stolen a corpse that contains experimental technology from a company attempting to use the human body as an information storage device. VERDICT This quick, entertaining read has the pulse of a thriller and the hook of a fascinating hero balancing on the edge of psychosis. It reads like a ready-made tale for a TV show, and, indeed, one is in the works.

Library Journal