Ralph's Rants Does reviews- Legacy #2 The Killing Fields

Book Review of ‘Legacy-Heirs of Sinanju- The Killing Fields’.

By Warren Murphy and Gerald Welch

 

This book is the second in the new ‘Legacy’ Series starring the children of Remo Williams, The Destroyer, one of my all-time favorite characters. Stone and Freya are both being trained in Sinanju by Remo’s Father Bill Roam. AKA Sunny Joe of the Sinanju tribe. Their handler is a man named Ben Cole, who is a former Mosad agent, but who now works for CURE under Dr. Harold W. Smith.  

What this new series seems to be focusing on is a group called VIGIL which is the polar opposite of CURE. Where CURE is trying to defeat threats to the United States and the world by going outside normal practices, VIGIL is trying to destroy the USA.

In this new volume we meet VIGIL’s new enforcement arms, a group of young women who have carbon fiber grafted to their bones (Wolverine anyone?) to make them indestructible. They are also pumped up with drugs to increase their speed and reflexes. These super killers have a new mission too, kill Stone and Freya. Well, at least one of them does, and her name is simply 14. She is the sole survivor of the program, save for one other who manages to escape and fade into the night.

What follows is a cat and mouse game between our brother and sister team of super Sinanju warriors and the VIGIL killing machine as well as between Ben Coles and his counterpart known as Helmut.

 

 

What I liked: The story was good and well written, and did not bore. There was enough action for me, which is always a plus because I can never get too many action scenes. Plus I like the two main antagonists. The spawn of Remo both hold their own admirably, while doing the typical great things you expect out of Sinanju. It’s fast paced, and it's a read you can’t put down.  

 

What I didn’t like: Not much, there are a couple of small items that I didn’t care for, such as Freya really being the star of the book, also her doing things that supposedly Remo hasn’t done. One of my biggest complaints is Stone smoking. How is that even possible with a breathing system like Sinanju has? Everything centers on breath in Sinanju, so I don’t understand that part, I’m hoping that is clarified in the next book or two. But I know Warren knows what he’s doing here, as this is all about his babies.  One thing I miss though is the constant banter between Remo and Chiun, there’s nothing like that here. You get the impression that both leads are still feeling their way around each other, which is fine. Now here’s my biggest complaint: I found this book to be a little too short. It seemed like I sped through it.

 

All in all though, it’s a great, fun series of books, this is no exception. The villainess in this book was exceptional and was a good match to our heroes. I can’t wait for the next one, and I hope it has more a focus on Stone and not Freya. I’d like to see the series start to focus on his maturing into Sinanju, right now, he’s playing second fiddle to Freya.