Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Legacy (Bourne Series #4)

Still a Bourne Fan!

I can't believe I'm reading Jason Bourne written by someone elso other than Robert Ludlum. I have to admit I felt a kind of reluctance in even reading the novel but if I'm going to be honest I gotta say that I enjoyed this one too. It's different and with all thats happened in this story I'd like to say Jason Bourne has come full circle, 'corny' when we're speaking about a mercenary here. Anyway, Eric Van Lustbader has some loose threads to the story like when & how exactly in the story did Khan find out who his father was? But still, this was a good read and the story has added to the over all persona to Jason Bourne making him seem more... enigmatic.

one of the great thrillers

this book has everything that a thriller needs. twists in the plot and a very well put together story make this book a must read for all spy novel readers. simply said this is a really good book and you should read it. i promise this is one that will be hard to put down.

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A moderate success

As an espionage thriller, Van Lustbader's attempt at Jason Bourne succeeds. The Bourne Legacy maintains a high measure of tension and contains sufficient plot twists to keep the pages turning; refreshing, also is the absence of the pseudo-fantasy mysticism that populates Van Lustbader's more recent modern thrillers (which would be horribly out of place in Ludlum's narrative universe). The major villain's motivations are a bit obscure, but that's not unusual or even fatal in this genre. As an entry in the Jason Bourne series, however, Legacy is less successful. Bourne actually appears younger and fitter than in the last Ludlum entry, The Bourne Ultimatum (of course, he was in his early fifties then, but still...). Key supporting cast members Morris Panov and Alex Conklin are assassinated off-stage and first encountered as dead bodies, while Marie gets quickly shuffled off into hiding from the unknown assailants. The net result is to isolate Bourne from the entirety of the previous continuity, permitting Van Lustbader to ignore or gloss over anything not related to this specific novel. This is guaranteed to leave a bad taste in many readers' mouths, since part of why series characters appeal is the presence of series continuity. Even the mental tension between David Webb and his Jason Bourne identity, likewise, seems less violent and personally challenging than in Ludlum. Ultimately, the net result is a good book, but one which probably would have worked better as one of Van Lustbader's original stories than as a Jason Bourne novel. Readers unfamiliar with Bourne, or who have only seen the recent movie version, will probably get more out of this book than those of us who have read all of the previous Ludlum series entries.

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