Carte Blanche reviews

I enjoyed Carte Blanche, not it's not a great Bond novel. I'd give it a 6 out of 10.

j7wild wrote:

it's a shame!

I had high expectations for this book and I was excited to get it.

but then I started reading it and when I finally figured out it's a reboot, I had to put it down!!

where did Raymond Benson go?

did he retire?

Benson was graciously "retired" in 2002 after his Man with the Red Tatoo effort. IFP later launched the Young Bond novels. Faulks and Deaver have sincerevived adult Bond with the last two books.

tiffanywint wrote:

j7wild wrote:

it's a shame!

I had high expectations for this book and I was excited to get it.

but then I started reading it and when I finally figured out it's a reboot, I had to put it down!!

where did Raymond Benson go?

did he retire?

Benson was graciously "retired" in 2002 after his Man with the Red Tatoo effort. IFP later launched the Young Bond novels. Faulks and Deaver have sincerevived adult Bond with the last two books.

The better question would be: where did JWild's sense of time go? Wouldn't this question have been better asked back in 2004...2005...2006 when no new Benson novels were published?

I thought CARTE BLANCHE was a pretty good start to the Bond series of new books, and even the title grew on me.

The story is enjoyable but it just doesn't seem like Bond we're reading about. This guy could be any generic spy with the name of James Bond. One of the reasons is that most of the time Deaver never invited us into Bond's thought process except in the last two pages. Plus the way he pretty much bowed to Joordan's every comment sickened me. Bond isn't this passive around people. In terms of the origin story, it need not be as involved as Pearson's excellent Bond biography but I would have liked Deaver to have gone into a bit more detail. Other than these things, CB was entertaining and I found the supporting characters interesting. Bond isn't Bond in this book though, which is a major issue!

Not a big fan of it. They've marketed it as a great, great novel and when I went through the chapters all I got was Bond against a basic terrorist plot. Bheka Jordaan was annoying with her PC comments, and in every page I found a mention to Facebook, iPhone and Harry Potter like shouting "Look, we're on the 21st century!!". Oh, and Severan Hydt (now I'm gonna say something that granted me a -1 reputation point in CBn once)... what was Bond doing against that stupid corpse-wanker? Oh please, Dr Julius Gorner was a great villain in comparison!

Ah, CBn, where disliking anything was a hanging offense.

Trust me, you'll find no Carte Blance fans here.

Awful, awful book.

I got CB a few months ago on a sale I couldn't pass up and it's only now that I've had the courage to start....this is easily the worst Bond novel ever officially released. It's a chore to get through, and at 100 or so pages in I'm really done--and this is someone who slogged through the worst of the Gardners without major complaints.

Benson's energy is sorely missed. This isn't a Bond novel. This doesn't even make much sense.

The modernizing doesn't work, but at the very very least the women are written decently.

Hello everyone. I searched for Deaver and only found mention of him in the merchandise section, so if a thread exists about him and this work, Mods please feel free to delete or lock the thread.

SPOILER ALERT!! SPOILER ALERT!! Don't want to know about the plot and/or ending please don't read any further.


2011 and the new Bond book is highly awaited! There's even a version of the book in a tin shaped like a Bentley (well, sort of. More of a coffin looking thing IMO)


I was impressed at first with this work. At first. As the book grew on, I realized James Bond was up against a waste management magnate. Ok....kept reading.....so nothing happens and nothing happens, then his co-worker gets killed in a crushing machine. Ok...that's Bond-ish. Kept reading and nothing happened and nothing happened. Then, the final Battle happens and Severan Hydt is killed by Bond.....LOL. No, no he wasn't. Severan Hydt was killed by Niall Dunne. How did the arch villain die? In some Bondian way? No. He was shot. The end.

I also did not like how he made Bond a vicious non-smoker. I mean come on. Anyone who smoked as long as Bond did, would not be so un-understanding of the habit. And I felt Deaver's interjection of Bond not understanding why one taps their cigarette packet before they open it to be just plain silly. Every smoker knows it's to pack the cigarettes more firmly so they burn longer. The character (can't remember his name if it was given) in the book should have taken out the first cigarette and turned it upside down and replaced it in the packet. Smokers do this for good luck and the upside down cigarette is the last one of the packet smoked. But I digress.