Legion by Brandon Sanderson is a quick yet fun novella by one of the premier fantasy authors of our time. When reviewers say quick, you can expect to plow through this book in one whole sitting. Personally, I think it took me about an hour and a half to finish. Therefore, Legion is a good read during that morning commute on the train or bus. This is obviously not the author’s best work but more like a side project. In fact, I couldn’t even tell this was written by one of my favorite authors! But don’t let that fool you. The story does have that “Hey, I’ve heard of that somewhere before” feeling but other than that, it’s a good quick read.
We follow the character of Stephen Leeds, a perfectly “sane” individual who just happens to have a bunch of hallucination characters living in his mind. Call it a gift or a curse but the multiple personalities of these characters has earn Stephen a great deal of money and has even researchers worldwide trying to figure out just what the heck is going on in his mind. Due to him being able to create characters in his mind that has a specific talent, Stephen is consulted with a very special job in which he is tasked to recover a very special type of camera.
What obviously makes this book so fun to read is due to the array of hallucinated characters that exist inside only Stephen’s mind. Okay, well to be to honest, we’re talking about just 3-4 here but nonetheless, each character doesn’t have its own personality. I did find some of them to be the stereotypical types though. Nevertheless, the book is short enough to forgive these minor shortcomings.
Legion is short paced yet full of action as the characters are usually in motion except in the introduction part. I did find myself not really liking the idea of what the camera was being used for once it was revealed to the readers. I was like oh no, not this angle again! It felt to me just a tad bit lazy coming from such a brilliant mind of an author. I expected something besides the ordinary even for a book of this size. But like many others have mentioned before me, Legion is a good quick read that doesn’t let up once you start!
Comments