Legion: Skin Deep

The quest for a stolen corpse in an alternate present-day U.S. dominates this sequel to 2012’s Legion. Yol Chay, owner of Innovation Information Incorporated, sends investigator Stephen Leeds in search of Panos Maheras, a researcher whose body may hold the key to stopping a well-intentioned but disastrous project to store computing data in human cells. Leeds musters his corporeal friends and 47 personalities, called aspects, to investigate amid pursuit by Zen Rigby, a hired assassin working for rival high-tech company Exeltec. Continuing the theme of Legion, Sanderson explores Leeds’s efforts to understand his independent-minded aspects and his need for them. Discussions of quantum physics and the infinity of time lend a slightly contrived profundity to Leeds’s examination of reality and illusion, as he muses, “I’m not crazy, I’m compartmentalized.” Alas, Sanderson fails to take this debate into the broader world; the sometimes flighty, sometimes assertive aspects are intriguing, but the conceptual basis of the work is never developed beyond sitcom level. (Dec.)