Review Tuesday: The Bourne Deception by Eric Van Lustbader

This is the seventh Jason Bourne novel. The first three were written by Robert Ludlum and the movies bear the names of those books. After the success of the movies there was a market for new Bourne adventures. The problem was that Ludlum passed away. So Eric Van Lustbader, a friend of Ludlum's, was asked to write new adventures. The Bourne Deception was last year's novel, and was Van Lustbader's fourth installment into the world of Jason Bourne.

The book takes place in modern times. Iran continues to thumb it's nose at the world over it's nuclear program when it appears that they shoot down an American airliner over Egypt. The rest of the book is about various intelligence forces trying to figure out who was really behind the attack and why.

This book really has several plot lines going along. Jason Bourne is hiding out in Bali after the events of the previous book. There is a power grab in Washington DC for control over the CIA. Intelligence agents from the US and Egypt work together to track the real culprits of the attack on the passenger plane. Private defense firms are battling it out for lucrative government contracts. The villain Arkadin who has shown up in a couple books so far is in the various conspiracies deep. There's just SO MUCH going on. But the problem is that I found most of the characters completely loathsome. Even Jason Bourne becomes a bore with his reflections into his own life and who he really is. Considering that Bourne served in Vietnam, which would place him in his 60s now, he gets along pretty well. He's faster, stronger, and smarter than his adversaries. Also he manages to survive a sniper shot to the heart because he happens to have an odd shape to his blood pumper.

The characters have only gotten more cartoonish and completely unbelievable in this latest Jason Bourne novel. What's particularly aggravating is that these books make no sense in terms of continuity with the original books. He's a philosophical superweapon who can't remember anything. The ladies ALL love him, and the men feel he's too dangerous. It has just gotten burdensome and boring to keep reading these books. I can't stand anyone in the pages, and couldn't care less when key characters get killed off. And there was also an extra layer of trash tossed in as Jason Bourne is now the living encarnation of the God of Death, Shiva. ***Groan*** This is the worst book EVER. No wonder why it's taken me almost a year of picking it up and putting it down to finally finish it.