Book Review: The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader

Ever since I first read them in junior high, I've been a fan of Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne series of books. They had an interesting premise, compelling characters, exotic locations and violence. They were by no means high literature, but when it comes to a few hours of escapism, you can't get much better. They were, in my opinion, the very best work by a prolific writer who, I'm sure, still had stories to tell at the time of his death in 2001. This love of the previous Bourne books most likely will influence this review, but with good reason. I'll get into that shortly.

The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader, the fourth in the series, finds the hero, David Webb, once again trying to live his life quietly away from the dark underworld of his aler ego, Bourne. He's quickly running for his life from an assasin bent on killing not Jason Bourne, international legend, but David Webb, university professor along with a conspiracy to frame him for the deaths of two of his closest friends. He embarks on a journey that takes him from Georgetown University to Paris and Iceland while trying to unravel the mystery. Not a bad premise. Too bad that's going to be about the most positive thing that I have to say.

I grew up reading comic books. Still read some today. Absolutely love following my favorite characters from one adventure to another and finding out how they grow and develop. As I'm a comic book fan, I've grown accustomed to different creative teams working on the same characters. It happens regularly and the characters are often better for it if the new team can bring a fresh and interesting take on the characters and, hopefully, renew some interest in the characters. What I find unforgivable, however, is when a creative team gets the characterizations completely wrong. This was the problem when Eric Larson took on the reigns of Wolverine: he put the character in situations that were really beyond the scope of the character and obviously just a ploy to let him play around with as many characters in the Marvel Universe as he could. He got the characters wrong.

This is the same problem from which Van Lustbader suffers. He completely removes the driving force behind Bourne from the second and third books (Marie and his family) within the first fifty pages. Marie isn't even given the respect of a single line of dialog. She just gets a singular text message. So much for the driving force behind the character. Bourne, as he goes through the different situations, makes mistakes that I wouldn't even make, let alone one of the best operatives that the CIA ever had. One of the other major themes that grew throught the second and third books of the series was the fact that Bourne was getting older and wasn't the physical specimen that he once was, but here we receive no mention at all of Bourne's now-advancing age (he'd be in his 60's at least by this point). While we're talking about Bourne's age, let me point out that the author got his history all wrong as well. We know that we're in a modern context (text messages, cell phones, ect), but I also know that the Vietnam Conflict didn't happen within the last thirty years, which it must have to allow the author's "big surprize" of the first part of the book to hold true. "Big surprize" is in quotes since I figured it out within about fifty pages. One other thing about the characterization: Bourne is known as the Chamelion. He can blend in wherever he is to his surroundings to the point where you could be looking for him and standing right next to him without ever realizing it. This was always, to me, one of the best aspects of the character. However, it is comopletely lost in this book. Bourne is constantly being "made." "Look, there he is!." "We found him!" Where is the Chamelion that I've grown to admire?

Van Lustbader has created a novel that would have an interesting premise and, perhaps, passable as a generic pulp novel. However, since he decided to use the Bourne universe in which to tell his story, he has to be held to a slightly higher standard. He falls well short of that standard.