Brandt Legg
Author of The Last Librarian
About the Author
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Works by Brandt Legg
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Common Knowledge
- Gender
- male
- Short biography
- Brandt Legg is a former child prodigy who turned an interest in stamp collecting into a multi-million dollar empire. At eight, Legg's father died suddenly, plunging his family into poverty. Two years later, while suffering from crippling migraines, he started in business. National media dubbed him the "Teen Tycoon," but by the time he reached his twenties, the high-flying Legg became ensnarled in the financial whirlwind of the junk bond eighties, lost his entire fortune... and ended up serving time in federal prison for financial improprieties. Legg emerged, chastened and wiser, one year later and began anew in retail and real estate. From there his life adventures have led him through magazine publishing, a newspaper column, photography, FM radio, CD production and concert promotion.
OUTVIEW (book one of the Inner Movement trilogy)
OUTIN (book two of the Inner Movement trilogy)
OUTMOVE (book three of the Inner Movement trilogy)
For more information, please see BrandtLegg.com
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Found: Portals and Crater Lake in Name that Book (May 2025)
Reviews
The best I can say about this book is it has potential. I'd love to see the author follow up on a lot of the critical reviews on here, and rewrite it with those in mind, as it would improve the book greatly.
First of all, introducing new words. When done right, this can add to a story; not in this case. Their use didn't feel organic to the story; they were forced in with an info dump. Every time I ran across torgon (fuck) blac (cigarette) or zoom (email) it just completely broke the show more story.
Speaking of which, the author spends the entire book building up a character to make said character seem important, then poof, nothing. All that build up and investment in the character for nothing. Why bother with it at all?
And no closure. I understand this book is part of a series, and that events can, and often will, continue on from book to book; however, closure is still necessary damn it. Every character involved is either left on a cliffhanger, or just not mentioned near the end.
And character interactions. I can understand having relationships built around books; hell, a lot of my relationships are that way. But to have the character interaction between a father and his best friend, and the father and the son consist mostly of quoting books at each other? No one does that as much as these characters did. It was like reading about 3 walking cliches of pseudo intellectuals.
And don't even get me started on the major reveal 3/4ths of the way through the book that completely changes the story. It wasn't hinted at all, and making no freaking sense in the tone of the rest of the story.
I just hope the author grew and fixed a lot of these problems with the rest of his books. I won't know though, as unless my local library carries them, I won't be reading them. show less
First of all, introducing new words. When done right, this can add to a story; not in this case. Their use didn't feel organic to the story; they were forced in with an info dump. Every time I ran across torgon (fuck) blac (cigarette) or zoom (email) it just completely broke the show more story.
Speaking of which, the author spends the entire book building up a character to make said character seem important, then poof, nothing. All that build up and investment in the character for nothing. Why bother with it at all?
And no closure. I understand this book is part of a series, and that events can, and often will, continue on from book to book; however, closure is still necessary damn it. Every character involved is either left on a cliffhanger, or just not mentioned near the end.
And character interactions. I can understand having relationships built around books; hell, a lot of my relationships are that way. But to have the character interaction between a father and his best friend, and the father and the son consist mostly of quoting books at each other? No one does that as much as these characters did. It was like reading about 3 walking cliches of pseudo intellectuals.
And don't even get me started on the major reveal 3/4ths of the way through the book that completely changes the story. It wasn't hinted at all, and making no freaking sense in the tone of the rest of the story.
I just hope the author grew and fixed a lot of these problems with the rest of his books. I won't know though, as unless my local library carries them, I won't be reading them. show less
It's 2098, almost 70 years after the Banoff plague and subsequent wars killed 5/8s of the world's population. The world is united under one government and speaks one language. Disease has almost been eliminated, as has homelessness. Education and employment are guaranteed, and Runit Happerman is the last librarian in the world, presiding over the last public library in downtown Portland, Oregon. All books have been digitized, and in a world where everything is available in the Field (think show more the World Wide Web, only moreso), who wants to bother with ink and paper. In the last few years, Runit's colleagues in Brussels and Australia have seen their libraries destroyed, and now the word has come to him that in 10 days time, the Portland Library will also close and all its books will be destroyed, burned. These aren't spoilers. You learn this in the first five pages of the novel. When one of the few people who actually uses the Library shows Runit that someone is changing the words in the digitized texts ("To what purpose" becomes "To that purpose" in one book), the question is will Runit break the law and risk execution to save any of the works in his care. Fully 80% of Amazon reviewers gave this book at least 4 stars. The few who hated it, really hated it. This may be a spoiler, but be forewarned, this is the first of three novels in a series, and there is no clear conclusion at the end of volume 1. I, for one, will be reading books 2 and 3. show less
Rarely have I read such a dynamic opening. It places you alongside an escape route, as the breathless protagonist, in the grip of his "Outview"—his nightmarish vision—runs away from a danger yet unknown to us: "I kept running. Nine of us had sworn our lives to protect the precious artifact sewn inside my belt. Six were already dead…" And from this paragraph to the next, we take a sharp fall—a transition—from an era of sword battles down to the depth of a sacred Mayan pool where show more Nate wakes up to the present.
Kyle and Linh, his friends, provide support, normalcy, and a sharp contrast to the protagonist's own family life. Since the day his dad died, Nate finds himself lost in an ever-growing chasm between him and his mom, and the mysterious placement of his older brother Dustin in a mental institution. No wonder Nate's sleep is tortured. The spiral mist of the Outview takes him to a place about which he knows only one thing: he does not want to go there. In the death-like state of dreaming, he experiences a horrible, painful death in a new permeation each time.
The tension between the place he visits in his sleep and the place of his waking hours give the story its lights and shadows—but it also presents two different writing styles: the compelling, dynamic descriptions on one hand and the dialogue, trying to make sense of it all, on the other. I cannot say how other readers may react to this difference. For me, I found myself growing increasingly curious about the circumstances of his father's death, and of the lockup of his brother Dustin. Will Nate and his friends find a portal to another place, a secret world where they can hide from danger? Would their adventure continue to unravel there, and challenge them to find their inner courage?
Like his protagonist, the author has lost his father under tragic circumstances. From that trying time in his life, Brandt Legg became driven to find success, even as he swerved precariously on his way there. The sentences he puts on the lips of his characters are quite telling, in the context of his own experience: "Possessions, of any kind, block us from reaching the power of our soul," and, "I think everything's connected." The author must have recalled the crippling migraine headaches from which he suffered, and used them here as a model for Nate's Outviews. This, to me, is a delightful way to pivot from reality, and elevate its pain into a creative space. Call it what it is: inspiration.
Five stars. show less
Kyle and Linh, his friends, provide support, normalcy, and a sharp contrast to the protagonist's own family life. Since the day his dad died, Nate finds himself lost in an ever-growing chasm between him and his mom, and the mysterious placement of his older brother Dustin in a mental institution. No wonder Nate's sleep is tortured. The spiral mist of the Outview takes him to a place about which he knows only one thing: he does not want to go there. In the death-like state of dreaming, he experiences a horrible, painful death in a new permeation each time.
The tension between the place he visits in his sleep and the place of his waking hours give the story its lights and shadows—but it also presents two different writing styles: the compelling, dynamic descriptions on one hand and the dialogue, trying to make sense of it all, on the other. I cannot say how other readers may react to this difference. For me, I found myself growing increasingly curious about the circumstances of his father's death, and of the lockup of his brother Dustin. Will Nate and his friends find a portal to another place, a secret world where they can hide from danger? Would their adventure continue to unravel there, and challenge them to find their inner courage?
Like his protagonist, the author has lost his father under tragic circumstances. From that trying time in his life, Brandt Legg became driven to find success, even as he swerved precariously on his way there. The sentences he puts on the lips of his characters are quite telling, in the context of his own experience: "Possessions, of any kind, block us from reaching the power of our soul," and, "I think everything's connected." The author must have recalled the crippling migraine headaches from which he suffered, and used them here as a model for Nate's Outviews. This, to me, is a delightful way to pivot from reality, and elevate its pain into a creative space. Call it what it is: inspiration.
Five stars. show less
Brilliantly written, Cosega Search challenges you to put the puzzle together as if you yourself were an archeologist who came upon the broken pieces of a mysterious vessel, a vessel that holds a long forgotten secret that must be figured out. The author, Brandt Legg, suggests that it is the past that sheds a light onto the mystery of the future. He has created a masterful modern story with clever dialog that moves the search along, combining modernity with references to antiquity, and he show more heightens the suspense as the Cosega sequence must be deciphered.
Together with Ripley Gaines, the brilliant archeologist who has a controversial theory that he is yet to prove, you must dig into the clues and decode them in time, to prevent a calamity of immense proportions.
“There will be a time at the beginning of the twenty-first century whence the earth shall reveal an impossible object. Within the stone is a light which will cause the holy city to collapse, for it shall erase the past, demonstrate all knowledge to be false, and the scriptures to be a hoax."
Five stars. show less
Together with Ripley Gaines, the brilliant archeologist who has a controversial theory that he is yet to prove, you must dig into the clues and decode them in time, to prevent a calamity of immense proportions.
“There will be a time at the beginning of the twenty-first century whence the earth shall reveal an impossible object. Within the stone is a light which will cause the holy city to collapse, for it shall erase the past, demonstrate all knowledge to be false, and the scriptures to be a hoax."
Five stars. show less
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