Customer Reviews

The Bourne Ultimatum (Bourne Trilogy, Book 3)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Ludlum is better than this. Filled to the brim with expositional dialogue and ridiculous plot twists, "The Bourne Ultimatum" is half a good novel. The good part is pure Ludlum; the abliity to weave a good yarn of intrigue and suspense. But the bad is a Jason Bourne who makes one elementary mistake after another; mistakes of judgement that your auntie wouldn't make if she had even the smallest iota of common sense. Bourne does not. Neither does his wife. Nor does his secret agent friends. Heck, you or I could have killed Carlos the Jackel five times in the course of this book, but Jason Bourne can't get it done. I finally assumed that Bourne's primary objective was to inflate Ludlum's page count, and the FUNDAMENTAL mistakes he made regarding his family had me rooting for the bad guy to off them just to make Bourne pay for his bone-headedness.

With an entire world in which to hide, Bourne sends his kids to an island that even the worst private detective could find in a day, and you know what, that's exactly what happens. In addition to the "trail of crumbs" method of concealment he employs, just about everyone Bourne knows jumps on a jet and follows him to Paris so even blind people can follow them to the gifted Jason. His own dimwit wife follows him there, and darn it, it just made me want her dead. Sorry.

I love the Bourne character, but this foolish person makes you cringe every time he says, "It's him. The Jackel," and believe you me, he says it about fifty thousand times. Bottom line, a cat has nine lives, but if this version of Jason Bourne were hunting him, he'd have a hundred and nine.

The Bourne Ultimatum pits Jason Bourne against his main nemesis, Carlos the Jackal. The scene that this book sets up feels very exciting as you pick up this book, especially with the thought of Bourne v/s Carlos.

Well, the book is very good, not outstanding, but very well written. Its got plenty of action, and is much more fast paced than the previous two books. Some of the confrontations that Bourne has with Carlos are quite tense and exciting. There's also a sub-plot regarding the old Medusa that Bourne was a part of but the plots get entangled pretty soon, and its down to a massive game of cat and mouse played between two of the world's most feared assasins.

Ludlum once again manages to keep the book engrossing throughout. His main character is almost 15 years older than what he was in the first part of the series. The ageing factor is handled well and reminds us that Jason Bourne is human after all.

Once gets a nice peek into Carlos's life too, especially about the ways in which he works and how he's hell bent on killing the only man who has seen his face. Marie St Jaques's character is wonderful as always, together with Conklin and Mo, they make up the rest of the known cast. David Webb has had children as well, but sadly there's no interaction between Daddy and his kids. (thank god Ludlum writes Thrillers!)

This is a good book, but the reason I said it wasn't outstanding, was due to one thing only. That was the climax. It was too weak, especially after three long books, Jason Bourne deserved something much more. Well perhaps, Carlos and Bourne have so many confrontations that Ludlum seemed too tired to make another one for the climax.

All in all, this series of three books are all great in their own way and are clearly three of the best books Ludlum has ever written, and quite possibly three of the best thrillers ever.

So be it, as JB always says.

If you have read any of the other Bourne books (Identity, Supremacy) you have to read this. Not saying it's the best out of the series, but it's neccessary for closure. It's vintage Ludlum with all of the plot twists and global conspiracies, but as someone said before, the Bourne books introduce a new view on things. You can relate to David Webb and Ludlum does an excellent job building layer upon layer of psych complexity that makes this character seem so real.

One tip: DO NOT READ THE BOURNE SERIES STRAIGHT THROUGH

Take a break between books. I went straight from one to the other in a matter of days. I truly feel I would've enjoyed them (especially this one) 10x better if I would have taken a break.

So do yourself a favor. They are good books.

This book is seriously flawed. Utterly implausible plot, unconvincing dialogue, seriously stupid characters. The writing was so tedious I had to skip entire pages of drivel just to get through it. The book was so badly written, I threw the book down several times from sheer frustration. I forced myself to finish the book, but never again. Ludlum is on my "Avoid" list.

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.

Before taking a 4 hour train trip, I surveyed the pulp novels available at the news-stand. I didn't want to make the mistake of picking up another book I would have to throw away in disgust 3 days later, like "Nightmares and Dreamscapes" or anything by that man-hating forensic anthropologist, what's-her-name. So I went with "Bourne Ultimatum" as a safe bet, figuring, since I had seen "Identity" and "Supremacy" in the movie incarnations, and they were pretty good, this would be more of the same.

I was very wrong. From the first few chapters, it became clear that the book was incoherent, repetitive, and its characters were laughably underdeveloped. Later, huge holes in the plot began to appear, apparent lapses in reason and knowledge on the part of the author regarding their own material. These seem to haunt many pulp novels, but nowhere is it more annoying. Also, the author has the lazy habit of putting a lot of dialogue in italics to show emotion, rather than writing emotional dialogue.

This book has become almost unreadable, so it's going to the curb tomorrow. I'm quitting on page 263. I don't like or feel attached to any of the characters, and the plot has become a confusing spiral of contrivances. I agree with the other reviewers who have stated that this book is a real slog to read; the opposite of a page-turner. It's sad to see a trilogy that apparently started well, end like this. You can guess from reading it that Ludlum, if he even wrote it, had no interest in the material, but had a contract to fulfill.

Identity and Supremacy were excellent novels, and I couldn't wait to get my hands on the final of the Bourne trilogy. BUT...I didn't even finish the book. Worse, I did something I think I have never done: I skipped to the end to see what happens.
I read at least half of it, and tried to get 'into it', but couldn't get excited for the characters and the plot. For starters, the plot is all too predictable, based on what happened in 'Identity'. Of course Bourne and the Jackal have to get it on, because they didn't finish business in the first novel!
(Incidentally, I really didn't care for how in Supremacy and Ultimatum, how Ludlum added the moniker 'Jackal' to Carlos' name. As if Carlos wasn't enough, he had to add some goofy name to him that doesn't add anything to the character, and the Jackal was never mentioned in Identity; only Carlos. Kinda annoying).
The character development was poor in this novel, esp. compared to the other two books. I just didn't feel any compassion for any of the characters. And Bourne's age and lack of "supremacy" was really lackluster. Let's face it, we all have come to believe Bourne to be invicible, and we like it that way. Ludlum drew it out too much how Bourne had aged and changed from the killing machine he was. It was taken too far, and Bourne became a pansy whom I didn't really care what happened to him.
And Marie was given a back seat character in this book. None of the brilliant woman we saw in the first two. The children were thrown in as a plot device only, and didn't have any life to them. My kids have life, and it's exciting. I hate it when authors throw in kids but don't give them characteristics.
Like I said, I was disappointed, and felt let down after the first two excellent reads.

I loved the first 2 [Identity and Supremacy] but threw this one out... this 650 page book could have been done in 300... so much bla-bla-bla... the principals keep going around in circles between DC, Paris and Tranquility... Bourne is stuck between his 2 identities... the Jackal is always a few steps ahead... Bourne gets shot so many times but everybody else dies??? I read the first 25 chapters before getting frustrated, then I started skipping chapters, then I jumped to the end and it still didn't make any sense so I threw it out...

IF YOU LIKED THE BOURNE IDENTITY, CONTINUE AND READ BOTH THE BOURNE SUPREMACY AND ULTIMATIUM. THERE IS EXCITEMENT, INTRIGUE, AND IT IS FAST PACED. MY ONLY CRITICISM IS AND THE ONLY REASON THE BOOK GETS A 7, IS THAT AT TIMES LUDLUM BECOMES A LITTLE TOO DETAILED AND A FEW CHAPTERS CAN DRAG. THIS IS NOW JASON BOURNE 13 YEARS AFTER PARIS AND 5 YEARS AFTER HONG KONG. I BELIEVE THAT THIS TRILOGY WOULD BE A GREAT MINI-SERIES.

It was after this book that I gave up on Robert Ludlum. His formulaic work ran together - I had stopped trying to keep the different "desperate, betrayed agent and beautiful woman running from corrupt government agency" books straight. The names and locations changed, but the plot really didn't.

The Bourne books were different though. "The Bourne Identity" was unique, and well done. "The Bourne Supremacy" is in my Top 5 of All Time - BY FAR the best of Ludlum's work.

"The Bourne Ultimatum" is different from the usual Ludlum formula as well. However, that is not a good thing. This is one seriously dumb book. The climax in some sort of Russian spy DisneyWorld (I'm sorry, but that's exactly what I kept picturing - "The KGB welcomes you to AmericaLand. Please watch your step.") is the silliest thing I've read since, well, geez, it's pretty much the silliest thing I've EVER read!

Save your money. Just pretend that David and Marie Webb returned home from "The Bourne Supremacy" and lived happliy ever after.