Bourne Ult (Random House Large Print)

Rating:
Summary: Too much of a good thing
Review: The first two (Identity, Legacy) are beautiful page-turners. However, in the third installment, the Jason Bourne vs. David Webb struggle becomes a dead horse. You can only carry that split so far in a plot line before the man either must end up in an insane asylum, or integrate the pieces and move on. While a desparately wanted the saga to continue, I would rather not have seen it end with this book.

Rating:
Summary: long and unbelievable
Review: This is the 4th Robert Ludlum book I've read, and I think it exhibits a marked decline from some of his earlier work. The plot is simply not very believable. Carlos the Jackal is simply unbelievable as a villain - there's no way he could maintain such a far-flung empire of informants, thugs, and hit-men, all willing to die for him, no questions asked, while he stays totally untouchable, masquerading as a priest. The most believable scene in the book is when he shows up in Moscow and his people there laugh at him because he is so ridiculous. Seriously, how many times can Carlos run misdirections where he escapes out the back door or sends a fake van somewhere while his thugs get gunned down? Come on, who would ever work for this guy?

He seems like a very different villain now than in the original "Bourne Identity". There, Bourne was able to track him down fairly easily - a random contact here or there dropping a name, whatever. Now, nobody can touch him, and there's a ridiculously long section where Bourne tries to woo Sancho into giving him a fake phone number, and Sancho gets killed. What a waste of paper!

And don't even get me started on the Mafia hit men. Ludlum went way too far with the Italian stereotypes there, to the point that they were just goofy. And the whole Medusa conspiracy thing is just very half-baked. Maybe there was something cool there, but Ludlum spends a lot of time building it up for very little payoff. The body count just gets silly too. I guess that's typical with Ludlum. But the plotting in this book is a lot more repetitious, and all the killing doesn't amount to much.

Anyway, I much preferred the Bourne Identity and Supremacy. It was like Ludlum was writing this one on autopilot.

Rating:
Summary: back on the pace
Review: This is the third and last book of Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne series, and he ends the trilogy on a high. While the "Bourne Supremacy" was clearly off the pace of the series' first book, this last one has it all. After going off on an Asian advneture/nightmare in Book 2, the third installment now brings Jason Bourne/David Webb to the ultimate showdown with his nemesis Carlos the Jackal. But don't fool yourself that this is a straightforward kind of deal: Medusa is raising its ugly head again as well, this dark chapter in Bourne's past having taken on a new manifestation in an even more dangerous form. Of course Bourne/Webb does not go hunting alone, his courageous wife as well as Mo Panov and Alex Conklin add their usual character color to this well conceived page turner. Once again the character of David Webb/Jason Bourne as the tormented split identity is exquisitely drawn and is not run thin by the breackneck pace of the globe-spanning action.
A must-read and very gratifying end to one of the best spy/suspense trilogies there is!