Warning: This review has spoilers. To begin with, the best thing
about the novel is that it is written using everyday English and a
clear description of the different places where the adventure
happens; from famous landmarks to local cuisine and traditions. Jason
Bourne is haunted by a crime he didn’t commit along with having to
discover his lost Thai son Khan. Therefore, Khan, similar to his
father, has become a professional killer and survived alone in the
horrors of Southeast Asia. His name, different from his original one
Joshua, is the same as the wild tiger Shere Khan from the Jungle Book
by Rudyard Kipling. Moving on, while Bourne tries to find out who is
the real killer of his old friends, Alex and Doctor Mo, he meets
Annaka. She is a femme fatale who only seeks power to end up in a
trap by the real villain: A terrorist named Stepan Spalko.
Here is where the Bourne Legacy is so familiar with the
blockbuster James Bond movies. Spalko is the perfect evil mastermind
who uses everyone for his own benefit. This can be seen with the
manipulation of Islamic terrorists such as Zina and her soulmate
Arsenov. Both Annaka and Zina, who seek power and freedom, end up
meeting their own doom. Still, Zina is not pure evil but rather
someone who regretted her evil path. In a way, thanks to the Muslim
Zina, Khan was saved from revenge. He decided to help his lost father
Jason Bourne to capture and eliminate Spalko.
To sum up, the novel has lots of action and it feels like you are
traveling together with Jason Bourne and Khan to discover places like
Budapest, Thailand, France and Iceland. Hopefully, in the future
there will be a movie adaptation of this last adventure which
humanizes Jason Bourne as a father rather than just the agent to save
the day. In this illustration with AI Craiyon, I imagined the main
characters like animal spirits surviving in a wild world.