This book also offers a chance to reacquaint with some of the characters we’ve grown to like. Also, to get a definitive and satisfying conclusion to the plight of David Webb that began in Ludlum’s masterpiece, The Bourne Identity. So The Bourne Ultimatum is certainly worth reading or rereading for fans of the series who have read the other two novels, despite its length. This is because The Bourne Ultimatum is way too long (848 pages). So is The Bourne Supremacy. With Ultimatum, however, it feels like the author was struggling to make the page count and augmented a decent central story with superfluous subplots that get more convoluted as the story proceeds.
In this story, Carlos is portrayed as a very different character from that in The Bourne Identity. He's truly scary - a broken man and a psychopath but still charismatic enough to control an army of old men (reads loyal veteran soldiers). In The Bourne Ultimatum, he's a raving lunatic hell-bent on revenge at any cost.
In non-stop action that moves from the US to Montserrat to Paris before ending in Moscow, Bourne and his allies prove incredibly inept, barely escaping the Jackal's traps but failing in their repeated attempts to ambush him.
Once Bourne’s cross-continental pursuit of Carlos takes him behind the Iron Curtain into the Soviet Union, things finally heat up. The climax, which is the part I like from my first time reading this book, takes place at a KGB training facility in Novgorod where key Western cities have been recreated in scaled-down versions for the purpose of espionage training. The complex makes a spectacular stage for the finale as Bourne continues to battle Carlos across continents - but all in the span of a few miles now in this mock-up setting.