Legion: The Man Lives of Stephen Leeds by Brandon Sanderson

I loved the show Legion and I picked this up because I thought it was somehow connected to the show. It’s not, I don’t think. But like the show Legion, at the center of the three novellas in this volume is a man and his many friends, or as he calls them, aspects. 

Stephen Leeds has many friends, or aspects. No one can see the aspects but Stephen. I was going to write that his friends aren’t real but they are real to him. Stephen is very much aware that his aspects aren’t real in the traditional sense and that he is the only person that can see see or talk to them. This might sound crazy, but he does not consider himself insane. He knows what’s real and what isn’t, at least most of the time, and the aspects don’t hinder is ability to function in the real world. If anything, they help him to function, with each aspect allowing Stephen to compartmentalize and parts of himself. J.C., the gun toting military guy, handles Stephen's paranoia. Ivy, a therapist or something like that, helps Stephen communicate with people in the real world a little more easily. Some of his aspects are experts at computers programming or different kinds of phones. I read it as Stephen being a genius but knowing so much that he was overwhelmed. The aspects appear to help him sort out the knowledge so he can use it more effectively. Without the aspects he just has a bunch of facts in his head that he doesn't know what to with.

I enjoyed reading this. Each of the stories was very different from the others. Legion is a combination of a mystery and a fantasy involving a camera that takes picture of the past in the present. Legion: Skin Deep leans more into straight mystery and involves a scientist, a possibly deadly experiment, and a couple of shady companies. In Lies of the Beholder Stephen confronts the possible life of his aspects and what life without them could mean and whether he wants to be without them.