Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds

I read the original Legion by Brandon Sanderson almost a decade ago, and honestly didn't even really remember reading it. But I bought the collected edition Legion: the Many Lives of Stephen Leeds at Chapters the other day because it sounded good and I like Sanderson stories; it was only when I looked it up on Goodreads to see if this was the whole story that I discovered I had read the original story! 

As previously mentioned, Legion's Stephen Leeds has many hallucinations of people (what he calls "aspects") who carry information for him, showing up as he needs them. His main aspects are Ivy, a psychologist, Tobias, a historian, and J.C., a Navy SEAL, though there are nearly 50 other aspects (and more come into existence when Stephen flips through books to learn topics of interest for his missions).

But through all three stories, Stephen is seeking Sandra, the woman who first taught him how to create the aspects. Before her, there were shadowy voices and nightmares. But with her guidance, Stephen was able to make sense of them. But there is always the risk that they will go rogue and become nightmares, especially if Stephen starts to lose control. Which is what starts to happen through the three Legion stories collected in this volume.

The first story is the story of Stephen trying to recover a scientist who made a camera that can look through time.  I covered that in my previous review 9 years ago, so I won't say anything more about it here. The second story has Stephen working for I3 (Innovative Information Incorporated), a corporation that is trying to hack the human body to store and access data. But after their top scientist dies in an accident and his body goes missing, I3 hires Stephen to track the corpse down and dispose of the corpse so their competitors can't crack the secrets in his DNA. The final story in the collection (and the final Stephen Leeds story) starts with Stephen getting a call for help from Sandra. Unfortunately, his control over his mind and his aspects is failing; will he be able to help her while keeping himself and his aspects safe?

While these are three novellas that take place over a period of years in Stephen's life, Legion: the Many Lives of Stephen Leeds very much reads like one big story (especially between novellas two and three, which I read together in one day). Overall I really enjoyed all three stories, though I will admit that the ending was a bit tough to read (I cried at the end). While we're told over and over again that the aspects are just a hallucination of Stephen's mind, they are masterfully written and you care about them (especially the main three) a lot by the end. They also seem like real people, having relationships between themselves that Stephen didn't necessarily envision. And it was interesting how the loss of an aspect affected Stephen - how the information that aspect held disappears completely from his mind (down to not being able to recognize something iconic like the Eiffel Tower).

While the end is a little hard to get through if you're grieving, overall I enjoyed Stephen's story. As usual, Sanderson hasn't disappointed me, and I look forward to reading more from him soon. :)