Legion
2012
- hallucinations and illusions
- fiction
- multiple personality
- gifted persons
- genius
- fiction, science fiction, short stories
- fiction, fantasy, general
The story
**A STORY IN THREE LIFE-SHATTERING ACTS.** INCLUDES THE NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED *LEGION: LIES OF THE BEHOLDER*. Stephen Leeds is perfectly sane. It's his hallucinations who are mad. A genius of unrivaled aptitude, Stephen can learn any new skill, vocation, or art in a matter of hours. However, to contain all of this, his mind creates hallucinatory people--Stephen calls them aspects--to hold and manifest the information. Wherever he goes, he is joined by a team of imaginary experts to give advice, interpretation, and explanation. He uses them to solve problems...for a price. His brain is getting a little crowded and the aspects have a tendency of taking on lives of their own. When a company hires him to recover stolen property--a camera that can allegedly take pictures of the past--Stephen finds himself in an adventure crossing oceans and fighting terrorists. What he discovers may upend the foundation of three major world religions--and, perhaps, give him a vital clue into the true nature of his aspects. *Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds* includes the novellas *Legion* and *Legion: Skin Deep*, published together for the first time, as well as the brand-new, shocking finale to Stephen Leeds' story, *Lies of the Beholder*. This description comes from the publisher.
What it’s like
Brisk, witty first-person narration with a restless, almost conversational pace, the voice of a sharp, slightly self-amused man who thinks in lists and footnotes and talks to the people in his head as if they were colleagues at a whiteboard. The world is the present-day one of hotel rooms, airport lounges, and foreign cities glimpsed between phone calls, rendered in quick, clean sentences that keep the momentum up. Ideas arrive in bursts of expertise, so the texture is brainy and playful, with a steady undercurrent of uncertainty about what is real. Tone is light and clever with a rising unease, the feeling of a puzzle box slowly opening. Violence is present but not lingered on: gunfights, a chase, a few sudden deaths, handled briskly rather than graphically, and there is no sexual content of note. It suits a long train journey, a weekend lying on the couch, or a reader who wants a page-turner with a mind-bending hook rather than quiet atmosphere. The arc follows a gifted loner forced to reckon with the cost of his own gift and the crowded interior it has built. For readers who enjoy cerebral thrillers, unreliable minds, and fast, funny prose with real stakes.
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