Legion

Continuing my Brandon Sanderson marathon, I listened to the audio of Legion today. Legion, a novella published thru Subterranean Press, follows Stephen Leeds (Legion), who has the unique ability to create multiple personalities when he needs them to fill a particular roll in his life or he needs to learn something new: for instance, Stephen needs to learn a new language? Suddenly he has a new hallucinatory personality that will teach him French. These personalities are unique individuals who interact with Stephen and each other, yet no on else can see them. Stephen even goes so far as to live in a huge mansion, with enough rooms for each of his personalities to live in.

Because of his unique ability (or psychosis), he has been studied show more by the medical community and has used his personalities to help those that can afford to hire him. When Balubal Razon, the inventor of a camera of unique and potentially devastating consequences, goes missing, Stephen is hired to help find him. This search takes him on an adventure around the world, and the result of his search proved to be one that I expected, but didn't see coming the way it did.

What was amazing was the questions that Sanderson brings up in such a short work: questions of history, time, morality, politics, and faith. This is an ingenious little piece of writing and a character that I hope Sanderson will work with again in the future. show less

Summary: Stephen Leeds isn't crazy. Sure, he talks to people no one else can see, but his hallucinations - or "aspects" as he prefers to think of them - are stable, persistent, and surprisingly useful in their various skills and personalities. Normally, Stephen (he dislikes the nickname "Legion") steers well clear of doctors, reporters, and anyone else who wants to study him and capitalize on his condition (whatever that condition is; no one seems to agree.) But when he starts receiving remarkable letters containing photographs of the past - of a past that seemingly predates the invention of photography - his interest is piqued. Now he and his aspects must race to find the owner of this impossible camera... if the whole thing is not show more just another set-up, of course.

Review: Brandon Sanderson tends to write long, sprawling fiction (sometimes perhaps too long, as in the case of The Way of Kings), which makes it easy to forget that he also knows his way around shorter fiction. Legion is in the uneasy territory between short story and novel, but I thought it was the perfect length: quick and punchy but with enough space to lay out the basics of a cool new world, and to develop a solid, thought-provoking story.

I like my fiction best when it not only tells a complete story, but still has enough room to explore and think about the stories that happened before or afterwards, the stories we're not being told. (If that makes sense, which I'm not sure it does. Put another way, I like my worldbuilding to be detailed, but maybe not to fill right up to the edges of the map.) And on that score, I think Legion excelled in two ways. The first was the character(s) of Stephen himself. The basic set-up reminded me pretty strongly of Matt Ruff's Set This House In Order, although Sanderson makes it clear that we're not dealing with regular multiple personality disorder. We get just enough hints of how his aspects interact with him and with each other and what they're useful for and where they come from to make it interesting, but without fully explaining every aspect (ha!) of the process, leaving room to imagine what comes next.

The other awesomely thought-provoking angle of this story was the idea of a camera that can take photographs of the past. The story covers what its characters do with such and object, but leaves you wondering - how exactly does such a thing work? Where would I go, if I had one?

These reasons are also why I think this story would make an excellent movie, or the pilot for a TV series (and according to Sanderson's website, it has in fact been optioned.) Sanderson's most famous for his epic fantasy novels, but it turns out he can write urban-fantasy/sci-fi thriller just as well. This story's exciting, interesting, fast-paced, and funny, and I had a total blast listening to it. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Definitely recommended, and not just for Sanderson's existing fans. It's got enough fantastical elements that spec-fic fans will find it fun, but there's nothing so outlandish that people that like action-thriller-type books would be put off by it. show less

This is a fun little story. Did you have invisible friends when you were a child? I had a whole fleet of them -- different friends for different circumstances and occasionally they would all get together at the same time and we’d have a big party. Well, the main character in this story has a lot of invisible friends too. The thing is, he’s an adult and he can really see them. The main character, Stephen, is incredibly smart, but his knowledge and skills have been divided up into different “aspects” of himself, which manifest as actual people with whom he has conversations. He’s fully aware that these people don’t really exist, but he mostly interacts with them as if they were real.

Since the story is so short, I don’t show more really want to talk about the plot for fear of spoiling the fun of reading/listening to it for somebody else. I’ll just say that it’s interesting, and that it’s sort of a cross between a mystery and science fiction. The story is resolved pretty well and stands alone well enough although there are some small threads left hanging. There’s a lot of humor in the story and my only real complaint is that it wasn’t longer – I would have loved a full-length novel with this character and setting. It was just too short to get into things in as much depth as I would have liked.

I actually listened to this as an audio book. I don’t have a lot of audiobook experience, but I thought the narrator did a great job and was easy to follow. I could tell which character the narrator was speaking for even before the speaking character had been identified. The story kept my attention very well which is something I sometimes have trouble with when listening to audio books. I had actually listened to this story once before, a few years back, but I enjoyed it equally as much the second time. I’m listening to it again now because I intend to listen to the sequel soon and I wanted to refresh my memory. show less

I scooped this one up quicker than lightning when I heard it was available for free on Audible. I love me some BSands. And this story did not disappoint, though it wasn't at all what I expected.

In fact, the first little while of the story reminded me a lot of a Joe Hill story. I love both authors, and both are men I'd gladly leg-hump in a flicker of a heartbeat were I to run into either of them on the street... or in a bar... or in their kitchens.

But I digress.

I love both authors, but they have very different styles. Yet the beginning of this story felt like the opening lines of a Joe Hill story, and that was exciting to me. Joe Hill takes the everyday world and turns it on its head and then shows us the fantastical in the everyday. show more You never know just where he's going to take a story, but getting there is so worth it.

And that's pretty much exactly what BSands did here. Well, what he does all the time, only this was a real-world setting rather than a fantasy-world one. Which is why it reminded me of Hill. But, I think I said that.

I absolutely LOVED the concept of this story, and the way that it was different than one would expect. I loved the way that the Aspects and Leeds... interacted. I loved the theory behind his particular division of mind, and the ways in which it benefited him. It was fascinating, and I would not at all mind a novel length story based around this character, err, I mean these characters.

I also really loved the concept of the mission that Monica brings to Leeds, and the ramifications that could arise because of it. (I'm trying to be vague here, if you hadn't noticed. It's kinda hard. LOL I want to go all rambly raving leg-hump, but I will restrain myself.)

Finally, I loved, once again, the way that Sanderson ties religion, or rather faith, into his stories. It's kind of a big deal for me to say that, being of an atheist-leaning agnostic persuasion. I just really like the way that Sanderson gets to the heart of a matter, and lets the story be, without leaning on it with his own opinions, even though we're able to see what his opinions are. He's a believer, clearly, and his stories deal with that - but never in the way I'd predict, and never in a way that feels preachy. And I appreciate and respect that.

Fantastic little story, and I highly recommend the audio. show less

After reading so may of Sanderson's cosmere novels, it's a bit odd to read one that isn't. There's still a 'Sanderson feel' to it, both in how the characters think and interact and also in this novel's version of a magic system.

Basic premise: the main character--Stephen Leeds--has manifest many 'aspects' that only he can see. Each is a specialist in a specific field that Leeds needed to solve a particular problem. It's left vague if the aspects are actually real (in the sense of being conscious entities, separate from Leeds himself), which makes the story all the more interesting. So far as Leeds is concerned, they are, and his mind will jump through some pretty crazy hoops to keep that illusion going.

Overall, that premise is more than show more enough to carry the relatively short (particularly for Sanderson) story of Legion and keep me wanting to see how it's going to impact the story next. It's impressive when the main plot about a camera that can take pictures of the past--which could potentially have carried a story by itself--is actually driven to the background by the characters of Leeds and his aspects.

Overall a really interesting read, well worth the time to read it. show less

This is one of those books that, while I loved immensely when I read it, I just couldn't put into words how much, or why. There was simply too much going on, too much to think about for me to put my thoughts in order. It's only now, when I have the sequel [b:Skin Deep|20886354|Skin Deep (Legion, #2)|Brandon Sanderson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1404932663s/20886354.jpg|40227944] in my hands and have started to dig into it that I realize I should really try and say something about the original before inevitably writing a review of that.

So, let's talk about this book. First of all, it has perhaps the best opening line of any book I've ever read.

My name is Stephen Leeds, and I am perfectly sane. My hallucinations, however, are all quite

show more

mad.

How can you keep yourself away from a book that starts like that? It gives me goosebumps to even think about it. Maybe it's because I'm trying to become a writer myself, but that's just one of those perfect opening lines that, honestly, Brandon may never top in the entirety of his career.

-Deep Breath- Okay, moving on...

Legion is the story of a man with a mental illness that doesn't actually exist. He's schizophrenic, but in a uniquely helpful way. He can flip through a book and immediately absorb the content. Okay, nothing too new there, but instead of him actually having direct access to said knowledge it is compartmentalized in his brain as an imaginary person, or 'aspect', that advises him, and they all have unique personalities and feelings of their own. He's quite rich and lives in a mansion whose many rooms are devoted to housing these hallucinations, which he can't help but treat like real people. This leads to some interesting limitations. He can't bring too many with him at once, because he needs space in the car to fit them (which is why he typically rides in a limo). They don't always get along with each other, one of them has trouble coping with the fact that he's a hallucination, etc.

So that's the basic premise behind the main character and the series as a whole. The plot behind this first entry is equally as imaginative as the condition of the protagonist.

Leeds is hired to track down a scientist who stole his own invention from the company that funded his research. He created a camera that can take pictures of the past, and while he's a scientist he's also devoutly religious, and wants to use the camera to prove that Jesus Christ really existed by travelling to Jerusalem and, well, taking a picture of him.

For a Mormon whose religious beliefs are well-known, Brandon is a born writer, capable of seeing things from other people's perspective and entertaining beliefs that are not his own, so I never once felt like this was an attempt by him to force his beliefs on anyone. I'll try not to spoil the end too explicitly, but I will say that it dredges up some deep questions about whether absolute proof spoils the point of faith, and if humanity is ready for such proof anyway. It's kinda like that age-old question, "If you had absolute proof that god did or did not exist, would you tell the world or keep the information to yourself?"

My only complaint is that the book feels a little too short. I wanted more Stephen Leeds so bad when it was over, but since the sequel is out and it's much, much longer than this book is, I'd say that complaint has been quelled.

If you haven't read any Sanderson before, I'd say that this or [b:The Emperor's Soul|13578175|The Emperor's Soul|Brandon Sanderson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1343059311s/13578175.jpg|19161502] is a fantastic place to start. They are both novellas, much shorter than his typically really long epic fantasies, but chock full of the same pure imagination and inventiveness that makes those books great. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that his short work is his best work. The only problem is that Legion is a limited release, with only a thousand copies having been printed (all of them are signed as well), so good luck finding a physical copy for under fifty bucks (which is what I paid). There is, however, a kindle edition available, and everyone in the world other than me seems to have a kindle, so there you go. For those who aren't down with the e-readers, The Emperor's Soul is readily available for purchase at a normal price, and I highly recommend it as well. show less

Gods of Hype! Hype Gods - Hear me now.

When your annoying echo of Hype told me to read Twilight - I told you to shove it.
When your annoying whistle across the globe told me to LOVE Avatar - I told you I don't have time to watch Blue People. Besides, I love ATLA and I'm a Firebender.
When you howled from across oceans saying I should fall all over myself to read SJMaas - I said...hhhmmm, Maybe and put it on my TBR
When you scratched on the windows with that high pitched marketing telling me to Bow Down to Shadow and Bone - I said...meh, Okay why not (it was a solid 3.5/5)

But now, finally your hype-siren-banshee-echo yelling on the rooftops about how great Brandon Sanderson is has finally ensnared me.

Here I am, after all the hype, and you show more know what - I dig it. show less