Caution! Adverbs AheadThe idea was good. It could have been pretty scary. But there were so many characters, I felt I needed a score card to keep track of them. Every chapter shifted through all the various plot threads, and this drove me crazy. I kept hoping it would get better, but it just didn't work and it became one of those, "Finish it just to see what happens" books.Maybe in film it might have worked since it seemed to have been written for those of short attention spans. Horribly convoluted, poorly written attempt at a spy novel. Utterly unreadable.I had never heard of Van Lustbader when I picked this up, I was mainly drawn by the Bourne product name which usually guarantees quality in my experience of the Ludlum works. Lustbader has vainly attempted to appeal to the short attention spans of a younger audience though lacks any real story-telling panache, consistently offering one and two (sometimes three) page scenes that cause the story to stop-and-start, not ebb and flow. Several characters and several strands of the plot are introduced simultaneously and subsequently abandoned in subsequent chapters, which can be confusing. Add to this mix the fact that Van Lustbader can't write much better than Matthew Reilly and the book starts to snowball into a massive failure. There is not one scene in the novel that will inspire or excite you. It feels drab and dull. The plain, dry writing style fails to grab you and combined with the convoluted plot I lost interest very quickly. The constantly changing perspectives don't give time for any exposition and scenes are rushed to the finish, causing characters to appear very one dimensional. I sure didn't see any of Robert Ludlum's Bourne in this novel. Just a cardboard-cutout hero who mentions elements of previous (better) Bourne novels to remind the reader who he is. His dialogue is sparse, uninvolving. His sidekicks are given no backstory or exposition. Poor writing and plotting aside, Van Lustbader is simply not cut out as an action writer. His perception of espionage operating procedures is childish and cliched, especially his depiction of women as little more than typical femme-fatale assassins. Set pieces fizzle and aren't exciting in the slightest, failing to effectively get the adrenaline going and feeling as if they go on for hours. He also has an over-reliance on extraordinary coincidences and "magic", assuming that nobody can hide from a spy killer anywhere in the world and never offering any explanation for why the bad guys show up and how they managed to follow Bourne and his lackeys halfway around the world with no trail to go on. I gave up at around page 100, see if you can do better.It's amateur hour at it's best. Pick your cliche. Re-read an old Ludlum novel instead.
What do You think about The Bourne Imperative (2012)?
Very slow book , which never really picked up the pace , too many characters just like the last one
—ally
Great read! Lots going on! Definitely want to read the next one.
—ambercucumber
Keeps moving, lots of detail; could not put down
—sassy09
