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Loading... Het Prometheus project (original 2000; edition 2000)▾LibraryThing recommendations ▾Will you like it?
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Information from the French Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to the English one. | |
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Information from the Finnish Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to the English one. | |
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Prometheus swept down from the heavens bringing the gift of fire. Wrong move.  | |
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The driving rain was unrelenting, whipped into a frenzy by howling winds, and the waves surged and crashed against the coast, a maelstrom in the black night. | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (2)
▾LibraryThing members' description ▾Book descriptions Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0312978367, Mass Market Paperback)
The Prometheus Deception begins with a deep-cover operative, a beautiful cryptographer with a shadowy past, a government organization that's not what it seems, and an assignment that goes very, very wrong. Nicholas Bryson, a spy for a secret intelligence group known only as the Directorate, has his cover blown on a Tunisian operation and is retired to a new identity: Jonas Barrett, lecturer in Near Eastern history at a small liberal arts college. Five years later, the CIA corners Bryson/Barrett and tells him that his entire 15-year career in the Directorate was a fraud, that the organization was really an elaborate front for the GRU--Soviet military intelligence--and that his former boss, Ted Waller, was actually Gennady Rosovsky, a GRU muckety-muck. Even Bryson's beloved estranged wife, Elena, was actually a Romanian Securitate agent assigned to keep him in line. And now... "Damn it!" Bryson shouted. "This makes no sense! How ignorant do you think I am? The goddamn GRU, the Russians--that's all in the past. Maybe you Cold War cowboys at Langley haven't yet heard the news--the war's over!" "Yes," Dunne replied raspily, barely audible. "And for some baffling reason the Directorate is alive and well." So far so good; after 22 thrillers in this vein, Robert Ludlum could probably have written this one in his sleep. Fortunately for his fans, he was not only awake at the wheel, but ready to race--on a track with more twists and bumps than a roller coaster in an earthquake. The CIA claims it needs Bryson to reinfiltrate the Directorate and help them bring it down, but when Bryson is cornered by an erstwhile Directorate acquaintance aboard a floating arms bazaar and rescued by a woman named Layla just before the ship blows up, he begins to realize how the years of retirement have dulled his formerly keen reaction time. While Bryson cautiously feels (and fights) his way from Virginia to Spain and back again, mistrustful of his new CIA colleagues even as he dodges murder attempts by his former Directorate henchmen, there are rumblings in the hallowed halls of the U.S. Congress. Several respected statesmen are raising a ruckus about widespread invasions of privacy, behind which stand a Seattle software billionaire and a mysterious nexus of power called Prometheus. But is Prometheus allied with the Directorate--or with a different group altogether? Filled with post-Cold War double-crosses, New Economy high jinks, and even a few Wall Street shenanigans thrown in for good measure, The Prometheus Deception is pure old-style Ludlum, repackaged for the new millennium. --Barrie Trinkle(retrieved from Amazon Wed, 02 Jan 2013 09:23:00 -0500) (see all 5 descriptions) ▾Library descriptions "Nicholas Bryson spent years as a deep-cover operative for the American secret intelligence group the Directorate. After a critical undercover mission went horribly wrong, Bryson was retired to a new identity. Years later, his closely held cover is cracked and Bryson learns that the Directorate was not what it claimed - the he was a pawn in a complex scheme against his own county's interests. Now it has become increasingly clear that the shadowy Directorate is headed for some dangerous endgame - but no one knows precisely who they are and what they are planning. With Bryson their only possible asset, the director of the CIA recruits him to find, re-infiltrate, and stop the Directorate, but after years on the sidelines, Bryson's field skills are rusty, his contacts unreliable, and his instincts suspect."
"With everything he thought he knew about his own life in question, Bryson is all alone in a wilderness of mirrors - unsure what is and isn't true and who, if anyone he can trust - with the future of millions in the balance."--BOOK JACKET.… (more) (summary from another edition) » see all 6 descriptions |
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But about 2/3 into the book big plot points are revealed and then it just goes downhill from there. At this point Ludlum just turns off the credibility factor and turns up the wonkiness. Things that don't make logical sense just keep occurring and characters that have nothing to do with the main plot appear. Even weirder, the baddies keep doing things to the main character that there doesn't seem to be any motivation for. But they do them anyway. Weird. I think Ludlum was trying to go for a cool, wow factor, but it fell flat.
I've read a few Ludlum books right now, and I think his earlier books must be his best because his later books just don't seem that good. (