Last Bond Novel You Read

CJB wrote:

Before continuing my Fleming re-read by commencing DAF, I decided I'd start on Carte Blanche again (I quit about 250 pages in). Paid for the damned thing, might as well see it through 'til the end. Already, since re-commencing, I've seen "Bond" get a stiffy over the fact that a woman leaves the business world for the "nobler" pursuit of being a white guilt merchant. But at least he F***S her.

You'll want to join the Boy Scouts after reading CB, once your head stops spinning from all the mystery thriller twists. :albino:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Finished Moonraker a couple of nights ago. It's perfect. Simply perfect. A better thriller has never been written. If I taught a lit class on the thriller, Moonraker would certainly be one of the texts. And what a touching final line: "He touched her for the last time and then they turned away from each other and walked off into their different lives."

The heart aches for that coldest of all cold-hearted men.

Poor Bond, can't win em all. But at least they got nude together on the White cliff beaches and he managed to grab a smooch, even if took a cliff falling on them to make it happen.

When I finished the book, I spent some time reflecting on the pleasant thought of the Moonraker crashing down on the nazi-bastard Drax and his sub full of wannebee blackshirts. Almost as much fun as No expiring under a heaping pile of bird dung. But nothing beats ape-bastard Oddjob being slowly squeezed out a plane window, like a blob of toothpaste. Serves him right, for eating cats. :twisted:

TB is great. Bond's pick-up of Dominetta was one his smoothest efforts yet. And yes Bond and Leiter griping over their lousy food, was quite comical. Leiter is lucky that barwaiter didn't dump a drink on him after having endured his lecture on oversized olives and bottle-shot scams.

I wish I could gamble like Bond. Bet the max and flip your cards without even looking at them. Must try that sometime.

So far I think the element of YOLT I am enjoying the most are the recurring passages of Fleming having to come to grips that by 1962 Britain didnt matter worth shit in world affairs, and having characters quite vigorously spell this out for Bond. Of course it had been true for years but at least for a while Fleming could write his thrillers and indulge in his fantasy of a Britain that could still hold its own. By the time of YOLT he just couldnt pretend anymore.

Just finished the bit where Tanaka scolds Britain for throwing away its Empire. Powerful stuff.

Over a year after I shelled out cash for it, Carte Blanche is finally done and dusted.

As I've mentioned before, the protagonist of the book (allegedly James Bond) is a one-dimensional non-entity. He lacks all the defining qualities of both Book Bond and Film Bond. He could damn well be any character from a two-bit BBC spy show. He's just a nice guy pursuing global social justice ("Nick Clegg with a gun" as he's been dubbed). Gone is the chauvinism, in comes politically correct outrage. Deaver's "Bond" would, undoubtedly, now be on his Twitter account expressing outrage at those Aussie radio pranksters who supposedly sow death and destruction everywhere they ring.

The villain is a bore. He likes recycling and fucking dead people. Awesome. Completely non-threatening and the "creepiness" was so forced that it was barely creepy at all. Comical if anything.

Really, all the other characters are duller than dull can be, especially that barking policewoman who seemingly has a chip on her shoulder larger than the entire African continent (at this point Deaver's "Bond" would be seeking legal advice to see if I can be prosecuted for hate crimes).

The plot fails to grip. The last 50 or so pages of the book are a total clusterfuck of a shemozzle. Rather than a big satisfying climax and comeuppance for the villain, Deaver s***s on everything that's come before and tries to shoe-horn in as many "twists" as possible. In the end, no one one gives a rat's about the end.

Oh yeah and the nonsense subplot about "Bond's" parents being spies was just stupid. Bore no relevance. Frankly the main character is so uninteresting I have no reason to care about his long-dead parents.

I recall that in the lead up to Carte Blanche's release, Deaver spoke at length of his lifelong love of Bond. I don't doubt he's a fan, but the novel is not what one would expect from a fan. A novelist should be independent, sure, but if you're going to write something starring an established character at least try to do it justice. At least try to make the reader feel like the character is there. Well Bond wasn't there at all. This was a mediocre novelisation of a bad episode of Spooks.

Interesting, CJB, that Mendes, another "life-long Bond fan," did Fleming's character better justice than did Deaver.

The Man With The Golden Gun

The first time I read a Fleming novel was almost a year ago, December 16th. It's a sort of circle. After a whole year, I got to the end of Ian Fleming's literature. It enjoyed me reading its books, more than the movies did.

TMWTGG doesn't present as "Bond's last adventure", just an ordinary adventure in his life. The villain is definied "impossible to catch and to kill", despite Bond catching him early in the second part of the novel. The situation goes similar to Goldfinger, with Bond working as the villain's assistant and taking part at his reunion with the other sub-villains, but he quits all their plans simply killing all of them.
Not much happens, after all.

Not a bad novel, but I expect something more from Fleming.

The main problem with Gun is that it's derivative. Fleming was out of ideas, but he was also almost out of time and he knew it. To get one more novel out, he had no choice but to cobble together bits and pieces from previous works and present them as something new. If Fleming had lived another year or two, Gun would have been a very different and much better work, I believe.

There's a lot that feels off about the book. It seems like a huge number of times Fleming identifies Bond as 'James Bond' rather than just 'Bond' (not in dialog, in description), which seems awkward.

That's what got me on board for any number of years with all those folks who insisted Amis or somebody else finished it for him, though I guess the evidence supports Fleming writing alone after all.

I think the end couple of lines, about the view always paling, seems very right though. And it was a good bit to go out on, if not a great one.

Yeah the weakness of the novel is actually what proves to me that it is just Fleming, not the other way around. Amis would have at leasy beefed the thing up. COLONEL SUN demonstrates he would have at least not left it so thin.

What I do like about TMWTGG is the sense of how tired Bond is, how exhausted he his after all these traumatic events. I love the opening. And I do like the very end, with Bond turning down the KCMG. Its ending with a whimper, not a bang, but for literary Bond I dont mind that. It would never work for Movie Bond, but it seems right for Literary Bond to go quietly into the night. And besides he should be retired by like 1966 anyway (granted Fleming revised his birth year to 24 in YOLT, but that was mainly for the sake of making him Year of the Rat -- either way I like that Literary Bond has a realistic career span from approx early 30s to early 40s)

CJB wrote:

Over a year after I shelled out cash for it, Carte Blanche is finally done and dusted.

As I've mentioned before, the protagonist of the book (allegedly James Bond) is a one-dimensional non-entity. He lacks all the defining qualities of both Book Bond and Film Bond. He could damn well be any character from a two-bit BBC spy show. He's just a nice guy pursuing global social justice ("Nick Clegg with a gun" as he's been dubbed). Gone is the chauvinism, in comes politically correct outrage. Deaver's "Bond" would, undoubtedly, now be on his Twitter account expressing outrage at those Aussie radio pranksters who supposedly sow death and destruction everywhere they ring.

The villain is a bore. He likes recycling and fucking dead people. Awesome. Completely non-threatening and the "creepiness" was so forced that it was barely creepy at all. Comical if anything.

Really, all the other characters are duller than dull can be, especially that barking policewoman who seemingly has a chip on her shoulder larger than the entire African continent (at this point Deaver's "Bond" would be seeking legal advice to see if I can be prosecuted for hate crimes).

The plot fails to grip. The last 50 or so pages of the book are a total clusterfuck of a shemozzle. Rather than a big satisfying climax and comeuppance for the villain, Deaver s***s on everything that's come before and tries to shoe-horn in as many "twists" as possible. In the end, no one one gives a rat's about the end.

Oh yeah and the nonsense subplot about "Bond's" parents being spies was just stupid. Bore no relevance. Frankly the main character is so uninteresting I have no reason to care about his long-dead parents.

I recall that in the lead up to Carte Blanche's release, Deaver spoke at length of his lifelong love of Bond. I don't doubt he's a fan, but the novel is not what one would expect from a fan. A novelist should be independent, sure, but if you're going to write something starring an established character at least try to do it justice. At least try to make the reader feel like the character is there. Well Bond wasn't there at all. This was a mediocre novelisation of a bad episode of Spooks.

Thanks for this review. If there was ever any doubt in my mind, it has been dispelled. CB is hands down, the worst of all the Bond continuation novels. It's so bad I don't think I could even stomach another book with Deaver's name on it. The "barking policewoman" is I think the stupidest character ever found in a Bond novel. That Bond put up with any of her crap is beyond the pale. And he couldn't kill a vicious assassin, who had already offed one of his allies, just to score pc points with her. I needed an extra bucket after getting through that chapter.

Yeah, I think the bit where Bond has to moan to BJ about how he wasn't actually going to kill the assassin was just about the most un-Bondian scene in the book. It was like watching a twerpy schoolboy pleading with the headmaster, tears welling in his eyes. Utterly pathetic.

If the original plan was to have a new series starring Puss in Designer Boots, I can only say that I'm immensely releaved it's not coming to fruition. Sorry, Mr. Deaver.

trevanian wrote:

There's a lot that feels off about the book. It seems like a huge number of times Fleming identifies Bond as 'James Bond' rather than just 'Bond' (not in dialog, in description), which seems awkward.

That's what got me on board for any number of years with all those folks who insisted Amis or somebody else finished it for him, though I guess the evidence supports Fleming writing alone after all.

I think the end couple of lines, about the view always paling, seems very right though. And it was a good bit to go out on, if not a great one.

The climax and denouement are pure Fleming. Really, there's no doubt in my mind that the entire novel is his creation. He simply did not have enough time to put his best foot forward. That said, Fleming's worst foot kicks the krap out of just about everybody else's best.

True on that last part, true true true (though I still have a real affinity for Pearson's novel.)

Thunderball observations: Domino's killing of Largo was much closer to the book version in NSNA than it was in the TB film, what with Domino putting the spear to him underwater, although TB was the much better presentation of the novel.

Fleming I think formally says goodbye to Smersh as a spent force, when Largo symbolically blows away the former Smersh Spectre-member who tries to sow dissension in the ranks.

Too bad about the U.S. seamen that volunteered to fight Largo's men underwater. We learn that 6 out of 10 were killed in the battle. We kind of got to know them a little bit on the Manta. In the movie they were simply dropped out of the sky and served as fodder in the battle, although each time I watch the film, I do wince when one of them gets killed. I guess we are to presume or hope that Vargas got killed in the underwater battle. We know that 10 of the Spectre frogmen bought the farm. That may have been all of them as there were no reports of prisoners.

The Spy Who Loved: I am really enjoying this little yarn. Fleming sure puts his journalism background to use here, detailing Viv's extensive work with the little paper in Chelsea and her movement up the ranks to a good position with the German wire service. Fleming takes time to delve into the rural French Canadienne psyche here and expands further on his own travels and knowledge of the Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal corridor and the pine forests of the northeastern U.S. states, with Viv making the drive south from Montreal to her fateful rendezvous with her spy who loved her, at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court in the Adirondack Mountains.

Again, Germans are villified, with Viv's second Euro boyfriend Kurt, as a cold and ruthless planner who makes love like a machine, scheduling their sex for Wednesdays and Saturdays. When she gets pregnant, of course he meticulously plans out an abortion itinerary and ditches her. Fleming isn't quite ready to let the war go. Understandable considering he lived it. Kurt makes it clear he can only breed with proper Teutonic Stock. Viv quips a little "Heil Hitler" jab into her narrative.

Viv's rich Oxford boyfriend, Derek Mallaby, turns out to be another real cad. Another dig from Fleming, this time at the Oxford set? Or maybe just addressing the reality of class distinctions in England.

Horror and Sluggsy do bear a passing resemblance to Jaws and Sandor from the film. This is Fleming's 3rd excursion with American gangsters following DAF and GF.

So why did Fleming depart so radically from his usual narrative style?

"I had become increasingly surprised to find my thrillers, which were designed for an adult audience, being read in schools, and that young people were making a hero out of James Bond ... So it crossed my mind to write a cautionary tale about Bond, to put the record straight in the minds particularly of younger readers ... ". Wiki

I must say though, it is just a little tad creepy - the older male Fleming penning a soft porn, 1st person narrative of a young woman's tale of sexual awakening, although he does get away with it - Fleming being noted "expert", and student of the female sexual psyche. :study:

It's a much better book than it's given credit for.

I sometimes wish that, in Pearson, Bond had ended up reconnecting with Viv rather than with Honey. I never understood him being with Honey in that book -- it's not like they had that great a connection in either the novel or the film. I've often felt like Honey gets a lot of praise and homage simply because she was the first cinematic Bond girl and thus very memorable, but I'm always flabbergasted when she invariably hits the top of "Best Bond Girl" lists.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

It's a much better book than it's given credit for.

I sometimes wish that, in Pearson, Bond had ended up reconnecting with Viv rather than with Honey. I never understood him being with Honey in that book -- it's not like they had that great a connection in either the novel or the film. I've often felt like Honey gets a lot of praise and homage simply because she was the first cinematic Bond girl and thus very memorable, but I'm always flabbergasted when she invariably hits the top of "Best Bond Girl" lists.

True. She was good, but not that good.

ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE

Now I've finally read the original English, non-edited version. It's pretty good, and the ending had me sobbing,as you would expect.
Now I've said I bought six of Fleming's novels in English (Penguin), and said I didn't want to read them in chronological order; but I've decided that that is just what I will do, I've just preponed reading OHMSS.
I'll start with the next one tomorrow, going back in time. (It won't be hard to get into revenge mood once I will reach YOLT)
Needless to say, I'm greatly looking forward to reading five more Fleming novels (in the way he wrote them, untranslated, unadulterated).

Some Flemingisms from TSWLM

“All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken.It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful.” thus spake Vivienne Michel.

“Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.”

Spy serves as a cautionary tale from Fleming to impressionable young female readers of his novels. Capt Stoner expounds to Viv on the nature of the crime battle, "there's a deadly quality in the persons involved which is common to both - to both friends and enemies.

" the top gangsters, the top FBI operatives, the top spies and the top counter-spies are cold hearted, cold blooded, ruthless, tough, killers, Miss Michel... They have to be.

"Keep away from all these men. They are not for you,(gentle female reader) whether they are called James Bond or Sluggsy Morant."

Thanks Dad!


OHMSS: the third Bond vs Spectre, following TB and TSWLM (Bond battles Spectre baddie, ex-Gestapo, Horst Uhlmann in Toronto).

Another great Fleming read. I'm just at the part where Bond launches his escape of Piz Gloria, Chapter 16 "Downhill Only."

Fleming has almost as much fun savaging Irma Bunt's appearance as he did Klebb's. In Bond's world villains are often ugly – proclaiming their ugliness of soul in their facial or bodily features.

"But, as Bond followed her into the dining room, it was quite an effort to restrain his right shoe from giving Irma Bunt a tremendous kick in her tight, bulging behind." Such restraint.

Fleming/Bond again is at his glib best. This entry almost rivals Goldfinger for Bond silver-tongued flippancy. He talks up a storm at Piz Gloria. Our Bond didn't waste any time making his move on Ruby Windsor. The 007 seduction skill, yielded much useful intel from Ruby regarding the girls identities and treatments.

Fleming gives a little shout-out to Honey Ryder's screen incarnation, courtesy of people watcher, Irma la not so douce, "the beautiful girl with the long fair hair at the big table, that is Ursula Andress, the film star," enjoying a pleasant afternoon at Piz Gloria.

First edition cover.

Bond's shoe seems to have a mind of its own. Glad mine don't.

I think the biggest problem with Carte Blanche is something I noticed while reading (and that stood out like a giant sore thumb at the time) is author projection. The passage where Bond recalls reading Tolkien and standing up for some bullied school boy in the playground. Fleming's Bond would never have read that. Or done that. Without knowing his bio that seemed to me like pure Deaver inserting himself into the character.

Similarly, the tasteless smut in some Benson's books reaked of inserting his own sexual appetite for Bond's. And the pedestrian writing of such scenes suggested to me much of that appetite was unsated.

Interesting contrast between Fleming's self-insertion, which is unquestionably made the character. In the continuation novels it brings it down.

Excellent points, Vesper.

It's been said that that's what the continuation novels will always lack ... none of their authors 'are or were' Bond in the way Fleming was.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

It's been said that that's what the continuation novels will always lack ... none of their authors 'are or were' Bond in the way Fleming was.

That's certainly true. But perhaps the Fleming estate (or whoever chooses the continuation authors) should attempt to find authors who are at least somewhat like Fleming, and, to a significant degree, share his worldview. Such an approach would lead to less laughable attempts at reanimating Fleming's character and world.

I can only imagine post-Fleming would work if authors didn't try imitating Fleming's prose, narration, ect. Take Bond as established by Fleming and tell stories in their own manner while keeping Fleming's Bond in character. You'd miss a lot of the flavor Fleming added in his writing that often mirror Bond's state of mind, but I feel it's futile to attempt to emulate that style because it'll only come off as imitation or parody.

But then again I've never read anything post-Fleming. I got CARTE BLANCHE for my birthday but haven't read a page out of that yet. I am considering reading the other novels first before I get onto Deaver's take.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Blunt Instrument wrote:

It's been said that that's what the continuation novels will always lack ... none of their authors 'are or were' Bond in the way Fleming was.

That's certainly true. But perhaps the Fleming estate (or whoever chooses the continuation authors) should attempt to find authors who are at least somewhat like Fleming, and, to a significant degree, share his worldview. Such an approach would lead to less laughable attempts at reanimating Fleming's character and world.

You see, I think that's difficult. I think the problem is that different people connect to Bond in different ways. I would say Deaver connected to the thrill of bringing down the bad guy, saving the world. Benson probably to the sex and the lifestyle. The problem is you can't really anticipate how that would affect their writing until they hand in a manuscript. And obviously there would be writers out their capable of being objective and at least attempting to write Bond based off Fleming's novels rather than their idea of Bond (I think Faulks, pretentious byline aside, did try to do this).