Jason Bourne 4
My version: Hardback
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Orion Books
First published: 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4091-1764-3
Pages: 529
Bought
From the cover:
Someone wants to take Jason Bourne out of the game. Forever.
A man is suffering from amnesia. But he gradually comes to realise the truth – he is a strange amalgam of a man named David Webb and a deadly killer: Jason Bourne.
David Webb has been living a quiet life as a university professor in the backwoods of America with his wife and children. But someone is about to shatter his peace. A silenced gunshot narrowly misses his head. Then he finds his two friends dead. A deadly assassin is on his trail and David Webb must once again tunr to Jason Bourne to save his life and family…
The Bourne Legacy is the novel to move Bourne further on, or away, from the Robert Ludlum version. A severing of contact with that world. A novel that really, in my opinion, is the one that (maybe) was used to set up the ‘Bourne’ the films. I’d say they read this, and decided to use the way Eric van Lustbader brought him into the 21st Century, as the blueprint for the Matt Damon film version. The first three films followed (very) roughly the first three books, but also kept some and threw out some of Robert Ludlum’s ideas. Ludlum’s Bourne was strictly 20th Century, the Bourne we know and live, is solidly 21st Century.
If Mr Ludlum left any instructions, or pointers, as to where he saw Bourne going, if he had been able to write a fourth, then I’d say they’ve been well and truly dispensed with by Eric Van Lustbader. That’s not a bad thing either, as Ludlum’s Bourne had got himself all bogged down in the Carlos the Jackal nonsense. The Carlos The Jackal stuff is really skipped, apart from a couple of mentions, in the same single paragraph. The slate is well and truly wiped here. Eric van Lustbader’s Bourne is still bogged down, weighed down with/by all the Vietnam stuff, and indeed that playes a rather large part in the storyline of Defiance. But how that is dealt with, is probably another step in the cutting of ties with the creator. As it were. From here on, Bourne is Eric Van Lustbader’s. Until he handed the baton to Brian Freeman of course.
Interesting that the film-makers called the Bourne without Bourne film ‘Legacy.’ Has nothing to do with this story, though was an interesting attempt to widen the Bourne-world out.
Still, it’s Eric Van Liustbader at his absolute Bourne-best. As he was for the next several books as well. I’d really love to have been in on the meeting where they decided how Bourne should be post-Ludlum. Hear what was decided and how much leeway Eric van Lustbader was given – or took. Obviosuly, it was a contract, to produce a certain number of books, and not make Bourne gay, or anything silly like that. But what the guidelines from then on were, I’d love to know. And, why was it (obviously) decided that the Bourne of the Books could go a completely different way, with almost no cross-referencing, to the film? Nothing of Eric van Lustbaders plot(s) have even remotely been used for the films. Their ‘Bourne’s are pretty much mutually exclusive. And no film-novel tie ins either? It would creat an almighty amount of confusion I guess, but to have the book and film Bourne existing alongside each other with no reference to each other, is strange. Obviously (again) above my par grade).
But…’children‘? Where did they come from? Where did they go for the rest of the Eric Van Lustbader and now Brian Freeman ‘Bourne’?
You can buy The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader from Amazon
(unfortunately, they seem to have updated the cover design (yet) again, so I’m struggling to find a version on Amazon to link to, which is the same as the version I have, pictured at the top. One of the few options if you do want the version I’ve got, is to buy a set of them)
Couldn't I Just Tell You 