by Joshua Hood
Release Date: February 25th 2020
2020 G.P. Putnam's Sons
Kindle Edition; 375 Pages
ISBN: 978-0525542551
ASIN: B07NTYW5HN
Genre: Fiction / Thriller
Source: Review copy from publisher
4 / 5 Stars
Summary
Operation Treadstone has nearly ruined Adam Hayes. The top-secret CIA Black Ops program trained him to be an all but invincible assassin, but it also cost him his family and any chance at a normal life. Which is why he was determined to get out. Working as a carpenter in rural Washington state, Adam thinks he has left Treadstone in the past, until he receives a mysterious email from a former colleague, and soon after is attacked by an unknown hit team at his job site.
Adam must regain the skills that Treadstone taught him--lightning reflexes and a cold conscience--in order to discover who the would-be killers are and why they have come after him now. Are his pursuers enemies from a long-ago mission? Rival intelligence agents? Or, perhaps, forces inside Treadstone? His search will unearth secrets in the highest levels of government and pull him back into the shadowy world he worked so hard to forget.
My Thoughts
The Treadstone Resurrection brings the reader back into the world of Jason Bourne (without Jason Bourne, of course), and we have a new hero, Adam Hayes, front and center this time around. I can't tell you how huge a fan I am of Jason Bourne, at least the orginal trilogy, but I am glad to see some new faces in this world. The action pretty much kicks it up in high gear right from the beginning and rarely lets the reader catch a breath throughout the entire book. And while I loved every minute of it, the element of suspense, that is he good or is he evil suspense that was in the first Jason Bourne book, was lacking a bit in this one.
Adam Hayes is a former operative for the Treadstone project, a highly secretive CIA project that was Bourne's former haunt, when his world is shattered when a hit team goes after him in the quiet neighbourhood he has chosen for his retirement, and his next egg. Having little information as to why this is happening, he is forced to rely on his instincts and his skills to escape and discover some answers. And this is where things get interesting. The book pretty much takes off from here and doesn't let up for a minute. I think I would have preferred just seeing things from Adam's POV rather than switching to different POVs as I really feel this was one of the things that lowered the suspense and gave too much away. One of the strengths of the earlier Jason Bourne books was not knowing if he was a good guy or a bad guy throughout the book, hoping for the best, but that suspense kept me up all night reading. Because we learn early on who the players are in this book, I really feel a lot of the suspense was lost.
I am definitely limited in my knowledge of guns and weapons (despite being married to a guy in the military as my eyes roll to the back of my head during these discussions), so I am one of those people who appreciated the descriptions of the weapons and how they were used. I liked knowing how the pilots sit in a helicopter versus a plane as I didn't know about these things, and I found it very informative. For readers who have this knowledge, they might find these parts a bit lengthy and annoying, but not me.
Adam himself is a great character and I really liked how he swings from psychologically confused to focused machine as needed. The constant psychological fight he has within him is interesting and I look forward to learning more about him. He is gritty, doing whatever it takes to fight for his life, and for others, but fights hard to not cross that path into being a killing machine. The flashbacks give a lot of insight into his character and I liked how the author used them to allow us to get to know him better.
What I have to admire in this book is the author's writing style as well as his "refusal" to just build on previous books. What he has done is take a concept, mold it, and create something new and different. What he has also done is lay a foundation that could lead to some very interesting times ahead for our hero. So while this book was solid, with a lot of action, it was also setting Adam up for some pretty interesting times ahead. Treadstone was at the point where it was going to be replaced with drones and other technological devices, with the director almost out of a job, and the author has pretty much thrown a curve ball into the whole Treadstone project and I am excited to see what is going to happen next in The Treadstone Exile.
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