Legion: Skin Deep by Brandon Sanderson (Legion series #2)

9/10

While Brandon Sanderson can hardly be called a lazy writer, one wonders how much further along in his The Stormlight Archive we’d be if he didn’t spend so much time running around in his other Cosmere shards and non-Cosmere universes. 

That being said, I wonder if that’s what I actually want from him. 

Legion: Skin Deep is the latest from Brandon Sanderson, a non-Cosmere novella following the adventures of Stephen Leeds, also known as Legion, a man with a plethora of personae in his mind that make him one of the most skilled detectives around. 

And also one of the most unstable. 

Skin Deep is a relatively self-contained book, with very little referencing the first novella, and with almost no cliff-hanger to finish on (with the one underlying current of just who and where is Sandra?). Leeds is hired to find a body – a dead one, still filled with secrets that could destroy … the world? Or just a company? No one is quite sure until the very end, but it’s a brilliant chase to discover the answer. 

And in the meantime Sanderson takes us deeper and deeper into the singularly unique mind of Stephen Leeds, and the multiple personae that make up his mental world. Leeds is evolving, that much is clear, but whether that means he’s also becoming insane is surely one for the medical journals to answer – because no one here is quite clear. We get some brilliantly funny scenes between Stephen and his personae, not to mention some brilliantly clever scenes that really shape our view of Stephen’s world. 

Legion: Skin Deep is an absolutely fantastic read, and while I’d like more and more of it, I think I understand why Brandon Sanderson has kept this to be a series of novellas. Maybe, in time, it will be expanded to full-length status (though that would require a lull in the author’s absurdly busy schedule of books to write), but in the meantime, I’m content to read these gems whenever they make an appearance.