The Bourne Supremacy

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good ... but I guess the first was better
Review: I read this a couple of months after reading "... Identity". It is good, but I believe the first had more surprises, bigger JOLTS in between....know what I mean? This one has a plot that seems too far-fetched, even for Ludlum [ :) ] .I'm looking forward to "...Ultimatum" though........... Jason Bourne (NOT Webb) is just too charismatic.....

Rating:
Summary: The best Ludlum I've ever read
Review: I've read about 15 Ludlum's and this is by far the best one I've ever read that has been written by him. I like how the setting is in Hong Kong and the plot is deep. I definitely recommend this to anybody interested in Ludlum or thriller novels.

Rating:
Summary: Jason Bourne is reborn
Review: David Webb (aka Jason Bourne) is leading a sedate and bucolic life as a university professor of Far Eastern studies in Maine. He has restructured his shattered life as a result of amnesia through the patient nurturing of his wife, Marie and government shrink Morris Panov. His peaceful existence is destroyed by a series of events in Hong Kong. An assassin posing as a cleric has murdered 5 people in a nightclub leaving behind a calling card identifying himself as Jason Bourne. One of the victims was an important official of the Peoples Republic of China.

Webb is soon visited by Undersecretary of State, Edward McAllister and Ambassador Raymond Havilland, both masters of U.S. covert operations. They reveal that an unknown assassin posing as Jason Bourne is being used by Chinese Minister of State Sheng Chou Yang to create havoc with the China Accords, which will turn over control of Hong Kong to the Peoples Repubic.
Sheng is a son of a corrupt and powerful taipan (godfather) of Nationalist China who fled to Taiwan after Mao took over. He schemes to create enough mayhem to compel the Peoples Republic to forcibly take over Hong Kong causing worldwide chaos. McAllister and Havilland beg Webb to reprise his role of Jason Bourne to capture the bogus assassin and lead them to Sheng.

After Webb refuses this mission, his hand is forced by the kidnapping of his wife Marie by the U.S. government (CIA). Bartering his wife's freedom with the completion of this latest deadly mission, Webb sets off for the Far East. Shuttling between Hong Kong, Macao and the Peoples Republic, Webb now Jason Bourne using all his covert operative skills sets out the solve this complicated conundrum.

Ludlum is this Bourne Identity sequel weaves a less tightly structured novel which seems to be moving in too many different directions at the same time. Although sometimes disjointed Ludlum does his best to tie his plot together to make The Bourne Supremacy a worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: As thrilling as the first!!
Review: This book was great - it was just as exciting as the Bourne Identity, and the setting (Hong Kong/China/Macao) made it extremely interesting. After reading the first book, I had to read this one, and it did not disappoint. I highly recommend it to anyone who loved the Bourne Identity.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: I found this book to be a rather good read. It was a little hard to get into at first, but it picks up quickly. Lots of action and suspense. One thing I noticed though, a lot of people here that are writing reviews saying they find it hard to believe Webb ran all over China with a briefcase full of money. He didn't. Maybe some people just missed it, but one of the first things he does in China is to drop off his case at a hotel vault. After that, the case is hardly mentioned again. Anyhow, I was well pleased with this book. Don't make the mistake of reading this with only the movie "The Bourne Identity" to go on. You have to read the first book to understand the second one at all.

Rating:
Summary: The Bourne Identity movie fooled me BAD
Review: I was REALLY impressed by the movie "The Bourne Identity" and made the mistake of thinking the excellent story line was due to excellent writing by Ludlum. Apparently, this is one of the few examples of a movie that's better than the book. This sequel is WAY too complicated to make any sense at all, and it's easy to tell the original book was the same way - the movie had improved on the book by paring away all the excess story lines (Jason Bourne would have had to have lived about 6 life times to have had all the past history that's documented in this series, and he's not even an old man.) OK, I finished the book; it wasn't so bad that I was going to stop in the middle, but I'd suggest you don't get started on it to begin with.

Rating:
Summary: The Bourne bore.
Review: As luck would have it, I had nothing good to read one night, so I picked this one up from the stacks in my garage. Robert Ludlum is a story teller, not a writer. I finished it out of pride, not desire. It has a nice plot, but the writing is poor, disjointed and a lot of the story is implausible. For instance, Jason Bourne travels all over Hong Kong and into Chi Com with a briefcase full of money and no one catches on? Wouldn't the briefcase be in the way when he was doing all that fighting and stuff? Marie's escape and flight was interesting, and the described chaos of Hong Kong is believable.

Do I want to read any other Ludlum books? Not unless I don't have to pay for them and I have nothing else to read. Evidently this book was a best seller for weeks and weeks. Must be an East Coast thing. In the west we recognize tripe when we see it.

Rating:
Summary: The Bourne bore.
Review: Ludlum's writing leaves much to be desired. The Bourne Supremecy has a good plot and opportunities for good action sequences, but Ludlum fails time after time to carry them convincingly. Many things are also implausible: Jason Bourne carries hundreds of thousands of dollars, all in cash, in a briefcase with him all through the story. I would think it would get in the way while fighting all the time. I can't imagine how it remained on the top seller list for week after week. Must be an East Coast thing. Out west we recognize tripe easily.

Rating:
Summary: Supreme Bourne
Review: Well, I think it's expected that Robert Ludlum's works are always supreme in quality. I am beginning to believe that Robert Ludlum calls his works fiction when in actual sense its fact. The characters are too "live" to be fiction. I really enjoyed The Bourne Supremacy.

Rating:
Summary: Great plotting, weak writing.
Review: When I first read The Bourne Identity, the first 150 pages or so were torturous, but once Bourne kidnapped Marie and the plot began to unfold I was hooked. The Bourne Supremacy, however, had me hooked after the second chapter (since the torture in this one only persisted through the first chapter). I have never read anything else of Ludlum's other than these two books but I have to give a tremendous amount of credit to his ability to map out the political and personal machinations of his different characters. His writing, however, could benefit significantly from a thesaurus (count the number of times he uses the word "mollify" - or "mollified," "mollifying," etc., for instance), and his dialogue is often atrocious. But, again, his ability to render subtle shifts in power dynamics (between groups, individuals, etc.) is riveting. So - it ain't literature folks, but it sure is damn fun.