I’m pleased to present to you Jon Foster’s cover illustration for the second Legion novella, Legion: Skin Deep, coming later this year from Subterranean Press. I think Mr. Foster did a fantastic job with this illustration, and I like it even better than his cover for Subterranean Press’s edition of the original Legion. There’s a small version to the right, and you can see a bigger version below.

If you haven’t read the original and aren’t familiar with the concept, I describe Legion as a fast-paced, witty, and supremely fun thriller with a psychological bent. 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, however, and the aspects have a tendency of taking on lives of their own.

A good way to check out the first Legion is in the Cosmic SciFi StoryBundle that’s available for only the next 9 hours as of this posting. And there’s an excerpt on Tor.com.

Ever since I wrote the original Legion novella, readers have been asking when we’ll see more of Stephen Leeds’s adventures. And the answer is in just a few months. Stephen and his aspects are some of my favorite characters to write, so it was a joy to get back to them. And this time the adventure lasts twice as long—while the first novella was 18,000 words, this one is 36,000, longer than The Emperor’s Soul. It explores Stephen’s world in interesting new ways, and if you liked his first story at all you’re going to love this one. You can read a preview here.

This book will also be released as an ebook and an audiobook, but the only version up for preorder at this time is Subterranean’s gorgeous limited edition. A special bonus for the limited edition readers is that you will also get the ebook version before anyone else.

Description from Subterranean Press:

Brandon Sanderson is one of the most significant fantasists to enter the field in a good many years. His ambitious, multi-volume epics (Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive) and his stellar continuation of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series have earned both critical acclaim and a substantial popular following. In Legion, a short, distinctly contemporary novella filled with suspense, humor, and an endless flow of invention, Sanderson revealed a startling new facet of his singular narrative talent. In the stunning sequel, Legion: Skin Deep, that talent is on full display.

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.

Legion: Skin Deep will feature a full-color dust jacket, and two full-page, full-color interior illustrations by Jon Foster.

In addition, upon publication, everyone who has preordered Legion: Skin Deep direct from SubPress will receive a free copy of the ebook.

Limited: 2500 numbered copies, bound in leather, signed by the author.