Brandon is one of the best-selling authors of Fantasy today with his Mistborn and Stormlight Archive books. For those many who have read those series or even his books written to complete the Wheel of Time series, Legion might be a shock.
Instead of stories based around spren or even magic powers, Legion is undoubtedly contemporary, perhaps surprisingly so. The first page shows a character shooting a picture of Osama bin Laden with a gun, not something we normally expect from a Sanderson book.
It is rather on the short side, but this means that there’s little room for detailed rumination or detailed backgrounds. As a result, the pace is fast, which will surprise those readers used to Brandon’s immersive tales sprawling over hundreds of pages.
The story is of Stephen Leeds, the ‘Legion’ of the title, whose mental condition is rather unusual. In his head there is not just ‘himself’ but also a series of multiple personalities, all of whom have special skills and talents – an aspect of Brandon’s work regular readers may recognise. They exist as what Stephen calls hallucinations or aspects, in a place in Stephen’s head that he can wander through.
This unusual condition means that Stephen is in demand from the government, for his multifarious skills give him an ideal vocation in espionage. (Older UK readers may now be thinking of 1960’s TV series Joe 90 as a similar concept.) When Balubal Razon, inventor of a camera that allows the user to take pictures through time, goes missing, Stephen and his team are conscripted to find him.
For such a brief tale, in its first UK print edition, there’s a lot going on. The tale involves time travel, an examination of mental health and politics and faith, all recognisable Sanderson themes but here examined in various time streams.
Much of the tale is recognisable in that there are elements that are easily identifiable from other science fiction, not to mention other Sanderson work, though I understand this is not one of the Cosmere universe series – cameras showing pictures through time I can think of in tales by Asimov and Clarke/Baxter, for example, not to mention in the slowglass of John Brunner. But the point is really what Brandon does with these tropes, and in the novella-sized space here this means that such things do not need explanation.
It is very readable, quite accessible and no doubt will win Brandon more fans. I read it in a couple of hours and enjoyed it a great deal.
Legion by Brandon Sanderson
Published by Gollancz, September 2015
Originally published by Gollancz 2013 as an ebook.
70 pages
ISBN: 978 1 473 21263 3
Review by Mark Yon
I loved this book! Did you read the 2nd one?
Not yet, lovvlylady: but it’s in the pile, ready to go at some point.
A quick fun read I’d agree. Not as enjoyable for me as the Stormlight Archives which I’ve loved, but definitely enjoyable.
I think the thing that surprised me was how different this was, compared with the Stormlight Archives. It is almost the opposite of Brandon’s more typical work: short, relatively restrained in its world building and characterisation and yet still entertaining. A very pleasant surprise.