Written in 1980 and you can tell it. A 22 hour audio book it was repetitive and long winded. ( )

Entertaining and action-packed spy thriller. The story is quite good. The writing perhaps was a bit disjointed. It worked well for me because the point-of-view character was suffering from amnesia and other psychological consequences of his brutal past, and the disjointed narrative made sense, but I have the suspicion that Ludlum is not a very good writer and in other books his style may not work so well. ( )

Great book but a completely different story from the movie. Slightly disappointed with the ending. ( )

Good

Well-written, gripping thriller, though ending was disappointing ( )

Favorite sentence: "The old man nodded the way old men do when repeating words that have stunned them to the point of disbelief." ( )

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I think I expected too much. It was good but not exciting throughout as I'd imagined. ( )

what a mess ( )

Booooooo!!! ( )

Very different from the movie. A lot of names to keep up with and remember how they fit into the story. ( )

not as good as I remembered ( )

Great original read of the Matt Damon movies. More than different enough with insights into who Bourne is. A little over written in places and not too obvious. ( )

A crime thriller... Not as what expected but quite up to the expectations... ( )

I was amazed to see the difference between the book and the movie. I loved the movie so much and I had to wait to begin to like the book. I was a classic thriller/suspense and Ludlum always did great. Also, I was surprised by the publish date, since the movie came so much later. West Germany! ( )

Suspenseful, thrilling, with a lot of action, a lot of plot twists. Who is Bourne? Read it to find out. ( )

Let me start out by saying that I was surprised at how different from the movie this book was. I think the movie was great, don't get me wrong, but I was surprised at how many liberties they took with the movie. In fact, I think it's safe to say that they took the main character, Jason Bourne, with the same background story (a assassin/amnesiac who is trying to piece together who they are) and then went with a totally different story.

This is one of the books that I listened to while driving to and from work - which means my experience with it is much different had I actually read it to myself. I think I would have actually enjoyed it more if I had read it myself. Naturally when you are driving and listening, your attention tends to start to go elsewhere every ten minutes or so and then come back after about a minute or two (that is if there are parts of the plot that aren't intense and exciting).

I thought the plot was set up very nicely in the book (I wish the man reading the story had done a better job when reading the character's voices, because it was hard to stop and then pick back up if he was in the middle of a conversation) with very few dynamic characters. I realize there were too many characters to try to develop them very far, but brief references to many characters became a little confusing for me from time to time.

I liked the way in which Ludlum kept the story moving and he also did a good job of describing the fight scenes - these can become so cumbersome to read if they are not executed properly. Based purely on listening to the story, I would give it 4 stars, but I'm sure if I had read it myself, I would have given it 5. ( )

Loved it. Enjoyed that the story is different than the movie. ( )

One of those cases where the movie elevated the source material, in my opinion. Ludlum's writing is repetitive and shallow - God only knows how many times I had to read the same internal monologues by Bourne. Give this a pass and watch Matt Damon punch some dudes instead. ( )

The book was good. I had a few problems with it and had to take a black marker to about 4 lines of the book. Also, I don't really understand why modern writers like Clancy, Ludlum, etc have to swear SOO much. Not a thing like the movie ;) ( )

Exciting start but eventually became very detailed and I felt was a distraction to the main story. The book makes me want to watch the movie again since it's been a while that I saw the first Bourne. ( )

Nu știu cum a vîndut nenea ăsta milioane de cărți; scriitura nu e cine știe ce. Ba mai mult, la unele faze de bătaie dacă încerci să vizualizezi cam cum sunt aplicate loviturile îți dai seama că omul habar nu are despre ce scrie (cu ocazia asta mi-a adus aminte de tanti aia care scria în ce poziții f*te domnul Grey - atît de fanteziste unele încît am declarat că tanti n-a avut parte săraca de prea mult sex ca să știe cum să descrie treaba -; am realizat că am dreptate după ce mi-a sărit în ochi un articol scris de o femeie și care spunea același lucru: tanti E.L. James, habar nu ai despre ce e vorba). Hai că am divagat puțin.

Ăsta e primul volum dintr-o serie care a ajuns la numărul 13, chiar sunt curios cum evoluează mai încolo chestiile. Două concluzii: 1. cu puțin marketing, oricine poate ajunge "New York bestseller" și 2. filmul e mult mai bun decît cartea (deocamdată mă refer la volumul de față). Cu mențiunea că scenariul e mult modificat față de povestea din carte.

În sfîrșit, prea multe pagini, se mai putea tăia la redactare, să mai dispară din bolboroseala fără rost (ca un mult zgomot de fond). De asemenea, nu puteam să nu dăm peste perle românești la traducere, gen: "plicul cu chibrituri". Pe bune? Singura dată în viață cînd aud de așa ceva a fost în cartea asta. Probabil traducătoarea Adriana Irimia n-a auzit niciodată de "cutie de chibrituri", asta e. ( )

All I can picture,
Matt Damon's slab of a face
the beefiest spy. ( )

I picked this up as a book written the year I was born and with the hope that it would be an engrossing but not terribly deep book to distract me from the state of the world. Given that this launched a successful book and movie series, I thought I might find it interesting. Instead, I actually found myself bored. There's a lot of repetition that drags the book down and extra twists and turns (that aren't actually twists and turns) that just end nowhere. I was also endlessly annoyed by the character of Marie. It was obvious that she was going to become the love interest/accomplice early on, but it became harder and harder to believe as she is badly treated again and again by Bourne. But then he rescues her (from a sexual assault that she only suffered because she was with him, and she was only with him because he'd literally held her at gunpoint) so it's all forgiven and true love, etc? All in all, not my cup of tea. ( )