Legion

Legion
by Brandon Sanderson
Recommended Ages: 14+

Subtitled The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds, this book (as I read it) is somewhat successful as a novel, although it was originally three novellas: Legion and Legion: Skin Deep, both previously published, and the brand-new Lies of the Beholder. Its main character is a unique genius who has learned to function, and indeed to excel, in spite of a devastating mental illness. Stephen Leeds has an extreme form of multiple personality disorder that would be a constant, debilitating torment, if not for the ability to converse with his alter egos that he learned from a similarly afflicted woman, the love of his life. Now he can say, "I'm perfectly sane. It's my hallucinations that are mad."

Using an indescribable combination of eidetic memory and mental division of labor, Leeds has the ability to become a world-class expert on anything in only minutes or hours. Each new specialty is embodied in a different personality that he can see, hear, and converse with. They are so real to him that he has to buy plane tickets for the ones he takes along on his globe-trotting, mystery-solving, troubleshooting career. Luckily, he makes enough money at it to keep them in a mansion with plenty of rooms for all of them. Nevertheless, his trouble distinguishing real people from imaginary ones makes it difficult for him to spend much time among the former, while his latest spate of cases have a weird way of putting the latter in danger.

His cases involve an artifact that could disprove at least one major religion, a piece of technology that could turn every person's body into a supercomputer, and the ultimate threat to his own piece of mind. Other than that, I don't want to say anything that might spoil your discovery of this book's psychologically gripping adventures. It's yet another example of Brandon Sanderson's peculiar way of building fascinating and totally original fantasy worlds that perhaps take some time to absorb, but that will stay under your skin forever afterward. Forward in brainy concepts and character drama but not at all behind in action, thrills and surprises, this book (typical of his work) is a completely satisfying piece of entertainment.

There are two types of Brandon Sanderson novels: Ones that I wholeheartedly recommend, and ones that I look forward to reading. For more examples of what Sanderson can do, see Elantris, The Rithmatist, Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians and its four sequels, the two Mistborn trilogies starting with The Final Empire and The Alloy of Law, and the Reckoners trilogy starting with Steelheart. Or, if you prefer, join me as I discover Warbreaker, Skyward, the Infinity Blade titles Awakening and Redemption, the Stormlight Archive trilogy starting with The Way of Kings, the Cosmere novels starting with Sixth of the Dusk, and (if I live long enough to get that far in the series) the concluding installments of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time cycle.