The Legacy of Molly Southbourne

The Legacy of Molly Southbourne, the last novel in the Molly Southbourne trilogy by Tade Thompson, is a thrilling conclusion to a series that deals with the bloody exploration of identity and self.

The original Molly Southbourne is gone, but her remnants/sisters remain. You see every time Molly bled, she created a killer clone of herself. In Legacy, her remnants draw together, seeking safety and a chance for peace from killer copies. The last Molly and her sisters built a home together and thought they could escape the murder that marked their past. But secrets remain in Molly Southbourne's blood--secrets born in a Soviet lab. What remains of the Cold War spy machine wants those secrets back in order to fight the West. To get them show more they're willing to unearth the dead and destroy the fragile peace surrounding the last copies of Molly Southbourne. And what will these remnants do to survive? Perhaps they'll team up with other copies, known as the Tamaras.

The Molly Southbourne series, much like other science fiction thrillers/horror novels (such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Frankenstein) asks thoughtful questions about identity and what it means to be human. But the series also packs in all the tension of a nail-biting thriller. The Legacy of Molly Southbourne lacks the emotional resonance of the first two novellas in the series, but it sure does pack a bloody punch.

Thanks to Netgalley and Tor Publishing for an advanced copy of this novella in exchange for an honest review. show less

When she bleeds, Molly produces mollies—Molly-cidal versions of herself. Now she’s living in a quiet British town with a few of the mollies who’ve become separate, non-homicidal people, but old adversaries are visiting, and out in the woods, some mollies have become, apparently, randomly homicidal. That last bit is a thread that’s sort of dropped in this slim volume that does answer a bunch of questions about how Molly became what she was through generational trauma and also gives us more of Tamara, a woman with very different relationships with her tamaras. Still don’t think the sequels match the initial volume, but certainly intriguing.

Ce roman court de Tade Thompson est le troisième d'une série consacrée à Molly Southbourne, une jeune femme possédant la faculté de se dédoubler. Après un premier tome époustouflant, un deuxième plus classique, ce troisième et dernier volet est également assez classique. Il apporte des informations sur les recherches ayant abouti à la capacité de dédoublement, avec notamment un focus sur la mère de Molly. La lecture est agréable mais il est frustrant de ne pas retrouver la puissance du premier récit dans lequel l'imagination débridée de l'auteur faisait mouche.