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3.74 AVERAGE
3.74 AVERAGE
I really liked this book: an easy but compelling read. Thankfully, much better than the movie. Unfortunately, the others in the series didn't live up to the same standards.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
*whispers* I liked the movie better.
The book is a little dated now, and probably could have done with a couple of hundred pages being cut. I wanted to love this book so bad, so I'm pretty disappointed that I didn't.
The book is a little dated now, and probably could have done with a couple of hundred pages being cut. I wanted to love this book so bad, so I'm pretty disappointed that I didn't.
adventurous
challenging
informative
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It was a long book and the series even longer. The movie series was much better and enough for me
I think I expected too much. It was good but not exciting throughout as I'd imagined.
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Bourne Identity: 3/5 Reviewed: 9/29/22
By: Robert Ludlum
The Bourne Identity is one of those novels that you have to shut off your cynicism to enjoy because the story can be unintentionally comedic sometimes.
The story follows Jason Bourne, a man suffering from amnesia, as he seeks to learn his identity while being hunted down by various professionals. Jason Bourne, like those that hunt him, is also a professional and while he retains his skills from his past life, he doesn’t initially grasp what he’s capable of or why everyone wants him dead.
Robert Ludlum’s writing style makes good use of complex sentence structure and complicated words, which is a breath of fresh air in a world where simplicity reigns supreme. And while I feel Ludlum strays into the territory of using complex terms to sound more sophisticated while not really adding anything to the plot, the terminology isn’t too overbearing. Most of the characters the reader is introduced to are sophisticated and educated, so it makes sense for their dialogue to have a little bit of unnecessary flare to it.
What I don’t appreciate about Ludlum’s writing is his overabundance of adjectives and similies that are unintentionally comedic. Towards the end of the story especially, there’s some language used that’s intended to make scenes more dramatic, but I couldn’t help but laugh to myself because Ludlum ventures into a tone similar to a soap opera, a complete contrast to how serious the story is supposed to be.
The best example of a scene that takes itself way too seriously can be summed up like this (Not a quote from the book.)
“Hey bro, I know you just brutally murdered your wife, but I have some really disturbing information I’d rather not tell you in your emotional state, but you need to hear.”
“Just tell me, I have no feelings anymore.”
“She wasn’t French.”
I know I dumbed that down quite a bit, but I laughed out loud when I read that page because the writing takes itself so seriously, but delivers the information in a totally bizarre way.
Marie, a female main character, also offers unintentional comedic relief. It’s blatantly clear that she’s what a man wants a woman to be, but there’s no naturality at all because she’s perfect. She feels so artificial. Here you have a woman who Jason Bourne is supposedly forced to kidnap and be horrible to in order to survive. Even though he tries to ditch her later on for her own safety or whatever. She also happens to be extremely gorgeous, intelligent, and wholeheartedly loves Jason even though she’s known him for only a couple weeks and was kidnapped for a few of those days. He then saves her from a rape before she decides to leave her life behind to help this man whom she knows nothing about, and rewards him with sex. For saving her from a situation he got her into by kidnapping her… I’m no expert on human psychology, but I don’t think sex would be on a woman’s mind after being sexually assaulted. I also feel as though the romance was super unnecessary, and does too much to soften Jason as a character past the point of likeability and into the realm of disbelief. If the romance with Marie was a tool for Ludlum to grant the reader a glimpse into the softer side of Jason, it was a massive misstep because I found it harder to take the story and protagonist seriously.
That being said, The Bourne Identity is intense. There are a few twists in particular that really captivated me and I wasn’t expecting. Finding out who Jason is and his struggle at fitting the pieces of his puzzle together is the strongest part of the story and outweighs most of the bad I wrote about above. The first act in particular is really strong and I was glued to the page while visualizing this amnesiac who’s one of the baddest men on the planet and doesn’t realize it. He’s vulnerable. He’s confused. He’s flawed. That’s what makes a good action character, and this is one of the few stories where I’d say that the character is better the less you know about him. The mystery is a large part of this story’s appeal, and that appeal is really strong for a solid chunk of the book.
I poked some fun at this story, but it was a good read, even if I fell out of love with it the longer it went on. This novel is definitely worth picking up, if for nothing else, for the first act, then just keep reading until you lose interest. I wish I had more specific good things to say about it, but the best way to sum it up is by saying it’s fun. And it is. But only if you can put aside whatever cynicism you may have and enjoy a story as a story.
Side Note: I read this story when I was a young kid, and I don’t know who let me read it, but I did not understand some of the concepts that go on in this novel. Now I do. I think I enjoyed it more when I didn’t.