Kat & Tabs Review: Legion – Skin Deep by Brandon Sanderson

December 3, 2014 4 stars, 5 stars, Book Review 10 ★★★★★

Kat & Tabs Review: Legion – Skin Deep by Brandon SandersonLegion: Skin Deep by Brandon Sanderson
Series: Legion #2
Published by Audible Audio on November 24, 2014
Genres: Adult SFF, Mystery
Length: 4 Hours 23 Minutes
Narrator: Olivery Wyman
Format: Audiobook
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
My Reviews in this series: Legion

Stephen Leeds, AKA “Legion,” is a man whose unique mental condition allows him to generate a multitude of personae: hallucinatory entities with a wide variety of personal characteristics and a vast array of highly specialized skills. As the new story begins, Leeds and his “aspects” are hired by I3 (Innovative Information Incorporated) to recover a corpse stolen from the local morgue. But there’s a catch. The corpse is that of a pioneer in the field of experimental biotechnology, a man whose work concerned the use of the human body as a massive storage device. He may have embedded something in the cells of his now dead body. And that something might be dangerous…

What follows is a visionary thriller about the potential uses of technology, the mysteries of the human personality, and the ancient human need to believe that death is not the end. Legion: Skin Deep is speculative fiction at it most highly developed. It reaffirms Sanderson’s place as one of contemporary fiction’s most intelligent—and unpredictable—voices.

five-stars

Kat’s Review – 5 stars

It should come as no surprise that I enjoy commercials and I like writing them in a review style format (proof: here, here, and here)…so here’s another one for Legion: Skin Deep, in the form of medicine with side effects. I’m pretty sure it coincides with this book fairly well.

DO YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH SEEING HALLUCINATIONS?

…47 of them to be exact.

DO THEY INTERRUPT YOUR SOCIAL LIFE?

“‘What are you doing here?’ I hissed.
‘Watching out for assassins,’ J.C. said.
‘I’m on a date!’
‘Which means you’ll be distracted,’ J.C. said. ‘Perfect time for an assassination.’
‘I told you to stay home!’
‘Yeah, I know. The assassins would have heard that too. That’s why I had to come’

YET THEY CAN HAVE RELATIONSHIPS OF THEIR OWN?

“The two of them had an off-again and on-again relationship. Apparently, ‘off-again’ had started when I wasn’t looking. I really had no idea what to make of it–this was the first time two of my aspects had become romantically entangled”

ARE YOU FINDING YOURSELF PLAYING DETECTIVE BECAUSE PEOPLE ASSUME YOU ARE A GENIUS WHEN REALLY…YOU HAVE MULTIPLE HALLUCINATIONS THAT ARE DOING THE WORK FOR YOU?

…Houston, we have a problem.

I have several that help with: understanding different languages, handwriting analysis, hacking, psychology, history, scientific data, and protecting myself…plus a bunch of others that just hang-out until I need them to learn something for me

DOES ONE OF THEM HAVE A GUN OBSESSION?

“‘No, listen,’ J.C. said. ‘We can shoot Pinhead McWedgy over there, and it will teach everyone in this room an important life lesson. One about not being a stupid mad scientist”

DOES ANOTHER PESTER YOU FOR THINGS?

“She shrugged. ‘I figured that somebody ought to do a little studying on the topic, and I had the time, since you pointedly refuse to imagine me a pet.”

DO YOU HAVE TO BUY FOOD FOR THEM?

“At the very least, the server wouldn’t have reason to complain about us taking up so many seats–seeing as how I’d be ordering five meals. Part of me wished I could have them give the meals to others after I was done imagining my aspects cleaning their plates”

DO THEY HAVE PROBLEMS OF THEIR OWN?

“It had just struck me. Audrey was insane. Each of my aspects were. I barely noticed Tobias’s schizophrenia anymore, let alone Ivy’s trypophobia. But the madness was there, lurking. Each aspect had one, whether it be fear of germs, technophobia, or megalomania.”

BUT THEY SOMEHOW HELP YOU IN SITUATIONS WITH ASSASSINS AND STOLEN CORPSES THAT ACT AS HUMAN COMPUTERS?!

…Holy. Fuck.

THEN YOU PROBABLY HAVE LEEDS!! BECAUSE ONLY ONE TYPE OF MAN HAS THAT PROBLEM!!

…Holy. Fuck.

SIDE EFFECTS FOR READERS MAY INCLUDE: Not being able to do anything for 2-3 hours (but sit on the couch and read), starvation (because you skip lunch to read), heart palpitations (from loving this book so much), headache (because you forgot to make coffee due to the awesome read), social anxiety (because who wants to talk when you can read?), extreme cases of laughter (and Chortling), and worst of all, heartache (because you never want it to end).

I will read any book that comes out of this series.

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Tabitha’s Review – 4 Stars

There is pretty much no way I can top the awesome review of Legion: Skin Deep that Kat gave this review. Suffice to say it was one hell of a hoot to read, errr I mean listen to. Leeds is back with a new case to solve. A body is missing, that of an engineer that worked for a company that was trying to turn the human body into a data storage device. So what if they might have invented a virus that causes cancer or heck maybe it’s zombies (ok no zombies really) but whatever it was that was invented is stored in the cells of this dead engineers body – that just happens to have been stolen. And who other then Leeds is there to find this body?

The narration was freaking top notch! It delivered very different and unique voices for all of the characters and hallucinatory characters that Leeds has. The dialogue between himself and his hallucinations is so much fun to listen to at times that I even went back and wrote some of them down for favorite quotes.

Best line ever (and delivered by J.C. the gun toting, paranoid Navy Seal hallucination)

I hate coincidences. Life is much simpler when you can just assume that everyone is trying to kill you.

Now that’s some wisdom to live by right? Even if this mystery, thriller type genre isn’t your normal read (which it totally isn’t for me) it is so worth breaking out of your comfort zone for. It does have light science fiction/speculative elements as a dear friend pointed out. The first novella had a camera that could take photos of the past and this one is engineers turning the human body into data storage so definitely SFF elements. Join the Leed’s people party.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kat Stark

Kat Stark

Guest reviewer
Kat Stark

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10 Responses to “Kat & Tabs Review: Legion – Skin Deep by Brandon Sanderson”

    • Kat

      It’s way different from his other stuff. I haven’t read it but I know he’s most known for his fantasy, so it’s good that he branches out a bit more.

  2. Anya

    Woot! I swear that I had pre-ordered the audio of this one a week or two ago, but Audible doesn’t believe me so I just repurchased the free book ;-). I’ll probably be listening to it after I finish my current listen since it is just so much fun!

    Pabs: you really don’t think this is sci-fi?? There was a camera that could see into the past in the last one 😛 And now apparently there are corpses acting like computer? That sounds pretty speculative to me 😉
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  7. Molly Mortensen

    I just got this for free, I wasn’t sure if I was going to read it, because the whole hallucinations thing.

    lol @ your review style

    I love the idea that his other personalities can specialize in different things, what a unique idea! Sounds like the book has a good sense of humor too! Okay, you convinced me. 🙂

    Yay for a double review! Sounds like it’s a good mystery too! Just because he’s paranoid doesn’t mean he’s not right. Yeah I usually don’t read mysteries either, this one sounds totally different though.
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