THE LEGACY by Melissa Delport, Book Review: Hard to put down

Melissa Delport’s The Legacy contains the quintessential elements of hard-to-put-down dystopian fiction – good and evil, love and passion, right and wrong, plus sacrifice (and lots of it).

The Legacy Synopsis

One man obsessed with power.

One woman prepared to sacrifice everything to stop him.

One war that changed the world.

“World War Three lasted twelve days. Twelve days was all it took for mankind to devastate the planet and almost eradicate the human race. No victor emerged from the ashes and billions lost their lives. We survivors lived through the bleakest of winters. A primal existence became the new order, and the little that remained of our humanity hung in the balance. Then one man stood up and changed the world. I believed, as did everyone else, that he was the hero of our time, the man who had saved us from our own demise. His name is Eric Dane and he is the President of the New United States of America.

He is also my husband, and my greatest enemy.

I grew up oblivious to the truth, until my father found me when I was nineteen years old. He told me about the many horrifying facts that our new leader kept hidden from us. And he told me that beyond the borders the Resistance grew and fought for freedom from the oppression that Eric Dane had imposed on us.

My name is Rebecca Davis. I am twenty-six years old, and in me the Resistance has found the ultimate weapon.” (Tracey McDonald Publishers)

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BOOK REVIEW

No offence to those who adore YA fiction – I myself have really enjoyed several titles from that genre over the years, The Hunger Games included – but it feels to me like the pairing of dystopian + YA has been done a lot lately. With that in mind I was drawn to the more mature premise of Melissa Delport’s dystopian Legacy Trilogy.

To be clear, many of The Legacy’s characters, and in particular heroine Rebecca Davis, are young and still ‘finding themselves’ which may appeal to a late teen audience, but this novel’s content is not PG-rated and its dystopian framework/plot spans broader political and societal issues.

In a dark world, where hunger, cold and sickness were now commonplace, food, water and shelter became scarce resources worth dying for.

Delport has also woven into her fictional future nice historical tie backs to the current state of things. From relatively simple beginnings this novel blossomed into a scope quite expansive in terms of characters, geography and timelines.

The Legacy contains the quintessential elements of hard-to-put-down dystopian fiction – good and evil, love and passion, right and wrong, plus sacrifice (and lots of it).

Given such an action-packed high octane read, and a smattering of cliche dialogue here and there — the many hand-to-hand combat scenes would entertain most male readers — I was impressed by the extent to which Delport managed to pull on the readers heart-strings. It was a fantasy (albeit a gritty one), but on occasions I found myself genuinely moved.

If it’s worth the prize, it’s worth the fight, Kwan. And freedom is always worth the fight.

The Legacy is a very entertaining read, accessible to a wide audience. While I guessed a couple of the plot twists probably earlier than intended, a few were sufficiently well disguised to genuinely surprise.

I must warn you though, Delport has written a killer cliffhanger… but is commercially astute enough to have ensured that The Legion (Book 2 of the trilogy) was immediately available to purchase. The final book in The Legacy Trilogy, The Legend, is scheduled for release early 2015.

This trilogy is just made for the big screen. Check out the titles (how great is the alliteration) and the striking cover art could easily double as a movie poster.

BOOK RATING: The Story 4 / 5 ; The Writing 4 / 5

Get your copy of The Legacy from:

Genre: Action-Adventure, Sci-Fi, Romance, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Author Information: Wife and mother of 3, Melissa Delport is the author of The Legacy Trilogy and the stand-alone self-published ebooks Rainfall and The Traveler.

She graduated from the University of South Africa with a Bachelor’s Degree in English in 2000. At the age of twenty-four Melissa started a logistics company (Transmax) from the spare room of her flat and built it up to two fully operational depots in Durban and Johannesburg. Now, 10 years later, she has sold her business in order to write full time. Melissa lives with her husband and three children in Hillcrest, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

An avid reader herself, Melissa finally decided to stop ‘watching from the sidelines’ and to do what is her passion.

“I was driving home from work when inspiration struck, and a storyline started unravelling in my head. For a few days it was all I could think about and eventually I realised that the only way to get it out of my head, was to put it all down on paper. I started writing, and that was that.”

Blog: www.melissadelport.com