LEGACY: MOTHER MINE is a worthy successor to the Destroyer series

Legacy, Book 5 - Mother Mine by Warren Murphy and Gerald Welch

THE DESTROYER is about a secret government agent named Remo Williams; LEGACY introduces two of his children who have been also recruited into acting as government operatives.  Freya was raised by her mother in the secretive land of Lakluun.   Her half-brother, Stone, was abandoned young and went into the military.  He has had a difficult time adjusting to life as a student of Sinanju, the all encompassing martial art that powers Remo.  

Most of the early Legacy books were “adventure of the week” where Stone and Freya dealt with some kind of threat to American security.  But unlike THE DESTROYER, Stone and Freya were shown to have a lot of vulnerabilities, and they would even fail on some of their missions.  This is kind of unique for this type of book and really added to my enjoyment of the series.

MOTHER MINE steps back from the usual format and deals with family.  As part of Stone’s deal with the government, his handler points him in the direction of his birth mother.  Meanwhile, Freya has returned to her homeland to help clear up her mother’s legacy.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Of course not.  Both Stone and Freya find themselves embroiled in pretty complicated situations.  Meanwhile, their handler ends up down a rabbit hole of his own as he finds out that the truth about Stone’s lineage might not be as clear cut as he suspected.

One of the things I love most about LEGACY is the relationship between Freya and Stone.  They feel like brother and sister, the way they tease each other and their relationship.  I will admit, I was a little concerned that in this book, the two characters were separated, but that ended up not taking away from my enjoyment at all.  Freya and Stone both stand alone as real strong compelling characters.

Throughout the series, Welch develops so many strong supporting characters.  Stone and Freya’s grandpa Sunny Joe could have his own spinoff series. In MOTHER MINE, Freya builds a friendship with one of the locals, Eleanora.  Now, I have read enough pulp adventure books to know that you shouldn’t get too attached to one-shot characters.  They typically come to horrible ends (or at the least, since the books are stand alone, they might not appear again for a while, if ever).  And Eleanora was no exception, but I was pretty heart-broken about her fate.  It takes a real skilled writer to make the reader put aside everything they should know and just to feel this much for a short-lived character.

While Freya may have had the strongest story in this book, I still really enjoyed the other arcs as well.  LEGACY always manages to squeeze a lot in, despite the fact these books are fairly short and quick reads.  I also love the way it expands the mythology of The Destroyer.  We’ve learned a lot about the various martial art forms that exist in Destroyer, especially Sinanju.  I always love that kind of world-building in my fiction.  

I also admire that while Welch does reference a lot of Remo’s old adventures, he does it in a way that the reader never feels lost.  Again, it goes back to being real balanced.  You definitely want to read some old DESTROYER books to find out more about these cases and characters who get mentioned, but you never feel you have to to enjoy LEGACY.

I basically read the first five LEGACY books back to back, so I was a little disappointed to realize I was all caught up.  The sixth book is coming soon (in fact, we even saw a cover not that long ago), and I can’t wait!