Legion: Skin Deep

by Brandon Sanderson
207 pgs (Legion series #2)

When Sanderson published Legion a couple of years ago, I read it in about an hour and enjoyed it a lot. But I finished feeling unsatisfied. It was a short novella, but the idea and the character of Stephen Leeds were so good, that I finished wanting much more. Fortunately, Sanderson wasn't done and he continues Leeds's story with this second--and thankfully, twice as long--follow-up book.

Leeds is a fascinating character. He has the ability to become an expert in any subject in a very short amount of time. After he's studied a subject, his expertise in that area is stored in a separate and distinct personage, or aspect as he refers to them himself, that appears to him whenever he needs to call up information to use it, and that personage counsels or directs him. To outside observers, Leeds appears to be out of his mind, talking to himself and interacting with these other entities in his mind. But his neurosis has also placed him in high demand, both by those in the psychology world who want to interview and study him, and by those who have problems that only he seems to be able to solve.

In Skin Deep, Leeds is called upon to find a stolen corpse, a corpse that possesses information others are desperate to obtain. Leeds needs to call on many of his aspects and put all of their lives on the line as he gets caught up in this fast-moving story that could only have come from the mind of Brandon Sanderson.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆