Well more like 3.5 but yes, so like so many people I have also the task of trying to read this huge series in somewhat of an order so having read first three books, yes the consensus is right and Ian Fleming's writing definitely improved compared to the first two books. So the story is simple a war-hero has built a rocket and everybody in England is excited for it but he cheats at cards and James Bond steps in on behest of M and another card game ensues, Fleming did love cards it seems. And then through the course of his investigations finally the mystery is resolved and it is huge. There are not huge action set pieces here and Bond has yet to turn in to the action star of the movies.

So sit back homie, relax pick a book and Keep on Reading.

People who don't read generally ask me my reasons for reading. Simply put I just love reading and so to that end I have made it my motto to just Keep on Reading. I love to read everything except for Self Help books but even those once in a while. I read almost all the genre but YA, Fantasy, Biographies are the most. My favorite series is, of course, Harry Potter but then there are many more books that I just adore. I have bookcases filled with books which are waiting to be read so can't stay and spend more time in this review, so remember I loved reading this and love reading more, you should also read what you love and then just Keep on Reading.

Moonraker (Bond #3) (1955) by Ian Fleming. This is the third book in the Bond series and it is far different than the Roger Moore movie version. I know it isn’t kosher to call in a movie adaptation when writing a book review, but I feel that most current readers have only seen the vapid movie version, having forsaken reading the Fleming original. Sad but true. All too many people will only know Bond, The Lord Of The Rings and even Harry Potter by their cinema incarnations and not the original words.
tWhat a shame.
tAnyway, in 1955 England there was fear of atomic missiles being directed at that small country. It was only logical that some form of defense be formulated. And if that wasn’t possible, perhaps an offensive weapon. Enter Hugo Drax, the metals millionaire, with his plan for a defensive missile.
tDrax, an amnesiac because of WWII, amassed lots of Pounds after leaving Germany. He has offered his genius and his money along with the services of a hand-picked crew of German rocket scientists to perform the miracle of assuring England a place at the table of the powerful nations once again. Hence the Moonraker project.
tThe nation loves and adores this lost soul from the poorer side of Liverpool.
tBut Drax cheats at cards. At Blades, which is M’s club, the chairman has noticed that Drax somehow manages to win all the time. M calls in Bond and together they investigate Drax at the club that night. Bond spots the method of cheating and outsmarts Drax at his own game.
tShortly thereafter there is a murder/suicide of two members of the Moonraker facility. One is the security man for the complex. Bond is sent to fill in and find out what the threat is before the test firing of the rocket at the end of the week.
tThis is a fast paced addition to the growing list of stories and, while the mystery of the plot isn’t hard to unravel for a point almost 70 years after it was written, at the time this must have been a very thrilling adventure. To a lesser degree, having seen so many later variations of the theme, it is still a riveting read.

Book three in the James Bond series.

While these books are definitely products of their time, I must say I do find them easy reading, low concentration levels required.

There did seem to be far less problematic content in this entry compared to the first two books and it was great to see Bond blown out by a woman finally!

These books are a real eye opener for me, I was always under the impression that Bond was a super spy, intelligent, no one could fool Bond. However, he comes across as very ditzy to me, easily fooled and not particularly clever.

An easy read to start the year.

Three stars.

A good spy story with an interesting twist at the end. Nothing like the movie that was based on the book.

Digital audiobook performed by Simon Vance


Book three in the original James Bond series, starts with a little personal task. A noted British hero, Sir Hugo Drax, has been playing cards at M’s private club, and M suspects the man is cheating. Would Bond (a notable card player) take a look and confirm M’s suspicions?

This novel focuses on cold-war sensibilities and features a villain who is not who he purports to be. Of course, there’s a lovely young woman who’s paired with Bond to ferret out the truth behind Sir Hugo Drax’s magnanimous offer of a dedicated atomic rocket to protect and defend England, paid for out of his own pocket.

The reader gets what’s expected: danger, car chases, explosions, dastardly villains, beautiful women, and ever debonair, intelligent and resourceful Bond.

Simon Vance does a fine job performing the audio. He sets a good pace for this kind of thriller, and I love his voice for both Bond and the villainous Drax.

I think Moonraker is probably center cut Bond. You get what you expect, and if it's your taste, then it's choice.

The storyline is rather straightforward. More Mission Impossible than spycraft, and the book is driven by sensory description rather than being carried by plot intrigue. There are long descriptions of food he eats and beverages he drinks and cars he drives and places he frequents and, of course, the women he eyes.

I prefer fiction that is idea-driven rather than image-dominant, so, a middling three stars from me.

Rating: 4* of five

Yes, again I'm rating the 1979 movie, not the 1954 book. Get over it.

The pre-credits sequence of this film is the absolute all-time best thrill ride in the Bondiverse. Seeing it again on the teensy netbook screen was just as thrilling and pulse-pounding as it was to see it in the theater 34 years ago. A parachuteless Bond flung from a plane, chasing a villain with a parachute, wresting the parachute from the villain, and death to baddie while Bond tiptoes lightly to earth.

It's WONDERFUL.

The plot's standard Bond piffle. Villain with all the money in the world manages to hide a space base in the jungles of Brazil, creates a supermegaultra whiter-than-white Master Race, blah blah you know the drill. What makes this fun to watch are the chase scenes in Venice...so beautiful, Venice!...Rio de Janeiro's cable cars, which had me whimpering in terror...and lastly, most campily, in outer space. That bit, the last half-hour or so, hasn't aged well.

I really love this film for its sheer, balls-to-the-wall speed of pace. Unlike many Bond films, the yip-yap seems to take less time than usual. This perception is helped along by the forgettableness of the yip-yap, I think.

Possibly the stupidest thing that happens in the film is the 7ft2in tall assassin, Jaws, who repeats from The Spy Who Loved Me, turns good because of the love of a (tiny, blonde) woman. Jeez. Possibly the best thing that happens, after the amazing opening sequence, is the launch of six space shuttles...filmed before even one had actually launched! It's quite impressive.

Shirley Bassey's back, singing "Moonraker", the last one she'd ever sing. Thank goodness. Apparently the producers asked her to do this after Kate Bush (!!) said no. The tune's just about what you'd accept in a 1959 film, not a 1979 film.

All there is to say con, I still give this one a pro rating.

There's a point in this book when a female operative has missed an appointment with Bond because she was kidnapped after discovering a madman's plot to basically destroy the world. M and Bond are discussing her no-show and M says something like, "she probably just had a fainting fit, but I guess we should go look for her to be on the safe side."

That's pretty typical of this book. It's unrepentantly misogynistic and xenophobic, but holy crap snacks is it fun. Can I please enjoy this book even though Ian Fleming was a major douche?

First time I'm trying a James Bond novel, and even though I wasn't blown away or anything, it was still an enjoyable read... Well, an enjoyable "listen" actually, since I picked this on audiobook. And I'm glad I did, because the always excellent Simon Vance does a great job narrating Bond's adventures.
I'm sure I'll listen some more in the future. Hopefully the next one will have a bit more action and a better female character.

Given my enjoyment of all the James Bond movies over the last 30+ years, my mind has been repeatedly reminded that the movies are based on a character that was originally created by Ian Fleming. My intent to read a Fleming novel was reawakened with every movie, but I just did not get around to it, until now.

With Bond being such a dominate force in movies, the comparisons between book-Bond and movie-Bond spent a lot of time floating around in my mind. It turns out that book-Bond is this real person with a real job. When not on assignment, he goes to the office, does his paperwork, meets with "M," and typically has lunch in the employee’s cafeteria. He lives in a modest flat in London and his martinis do not necessarily need to be shaken, but they must have a slice of lemon peel in them. In comparison, movie-Bond is practically a superhero. He’s invincible with all of his gadgets, devices, and tricked-out sports cars. Movie-Bond is Batman in a suit and tie.

Moonraker, the novel, is not much more than a typical mystery-spy novel. It moves along through its chapters revealing itself bit-by-bit through Bond’s deductive reasoning and spying skills. The story capitalizes on the public’s fascination with the then-emerging science of rocketry and its marriage with nuclear weapons. The first successful test of an ICBM came about two years after Fleming’s depiction of the one described in this book.

Gender depictions in Moonraker were an interesting snapshot of the 1950’s. Fleming’s women were made to exhibit unassertive brilliance while maintaining their attractiveness to men. In hindsight, this is something of a stepping stone on the long path towards achieving equality with men in society. Men, in contrast, were depicted as the masters of society who required ten packs of cigarettes on any given day to cope with life’s pressures.

The relative mediocreness of the novel and the bland nature of the James Bond character indicate a situation where the movie franchise probably perpetuates Fleming’s novels. Without movie-Bond, Moonraker would probably be relegated to the countless other dime-store paperbacks that find themselves for sale on eBay for only a $1.

Much to my surprise, I quite enjoyed Moonraker. It's entirely set in England (and Fleming doesn't seem to have noticed the non-white population already here in 1955), so there's no scope for racism unless you count Germans. And the female lead has her own skills, qualities, ideas and, in the end, independent life, very much as if someone had sat Fleming down and had a word with him about the old misogyny.

I really liked seeing Bond in the cheating-at-cards-in-gentlemen's-clubs subplot which comprises the first third of the book -- a survival of the old Establishment which Bond and his ilk were in the process of supplanting, both politically in the real world and in the sphere of popular genre fiction.

It drags a bit in the middle, and Fleming writes himself into a corner a bit with Bond having to listen to the climax of events on the radio, but the rest of it was really fun to read. There's still sadism, snobbery and tedious drooling about fast cars, obviously, and the plot is grandiose and ludicrous and hinges on absurd coincidences (primarily Bond becoming involved in Drax's affairs for entirely unrelated reasons a week before his plans come to a head), but hey, it's Bond.

For the first time I can see why it was felt these novels were worth adapting as films, and how they ended up being the sorts of films they did.

“There were three telephones on Bond’s desk. A black one for outside calls, a green office telephone, and a red one which went only to M. and his chief of staff. It was the familiar burr of the red one that broke the silence in the room.

It was M’s Chief of Staff.

“Can you come up?” asked the pleasant voice.

“M.?” asked Bond.

“Yes.”

“Any clue?”

“simply said if you were about, he’d like to see you.”

“Right,” said Bond, and put down the receiver.

He collected his coat, told his secretary he would be with M. and not to wait for him, left his office and walked along the corridor to the lift.

While he waited for it, he thought of those other times, when, in the middle of an empty day, the red telephone had suddenly broke the silence and taken him out of one world and set him down in another. He shrugged his shoulders – Monday! He might have expected trouble.

The lift came. “Ninth,” said Bond, and stepped in…

It ultimately took M a while to get to the point of what it was he wanted to speak to Bond about, and when he finally did speak, the subject matter surprised Bond, “Well now, you’ve heard of this man Sir Hugo Drax?”

“Of course, sir,” replies Bond.

“give me some facts about him then…as you see them. I’d like to know if your version tallies with mine.”

Bond takes a moment to consider his answer, then outlines his knowledge of the man.

“He’s a war hero of national proportions, he’s a multi-millionaire and his identity was shrouded in some mystery. Apparently, he’d been near an explosion during the war that left him with amnesia and with half his face blown away…”

Bond looked to M. to be sure he was still paying attention, then continued.

“His current identity was discovered when he and a member of the war office personnel when through the files. They came to a file of a man named Hugo Drax, and orphan who was working in the Liverpool docks before the war.

“Apparently, he showed interest when he saw this file and the physical description seemed to tally with what they thought he might have looked like before the explosion. Another man who served in the same unit as Drax was brought in and he claimed the patient before him was indeed the Hugo Drax he’d served with…”

“That seemed to settle it,” Bond explained further as M. listened, “especially considering that the advertising didn’t produce another Hugo Drax. He was finally discharged in 1945 in that name with back pay and full disability pension.”

Bond then seemed to recall something else…” He seemed to have disappeared about three years after the war…”

Bond then goes on to describe how Drax resurfaced in a most dramatic fashion…by cornering the market on a very valuable ore called Columbite. It was a metal with a very high melting point, one that would be integral in the manufacturing of jet engines.

Bond explained how it was later learned that Drax started by buying three tones of Columbite, the sold it for a profit, then bought futures in the ore before it was widely known. Drax had anticipated the needs of the Jet Age and cornered the market on its most vital component, in only three years.
“Now, anybody wanting Columbite was forced to purchase through Drax Metals,” Bond explained to his boss, “By 1950, he was a multimillionaire.”

The two men then discussed Drax’s latest venture involving the financing, out of his own pocket, a super atomic rocket, that he would donate to the people of Britain in order to protect them from any outside enemy.

It was called the Moonraker.

The queen conferred a knighthood on Drax for giving this technological wonder to his people…

M. then interjects, “All of that is fine, but Hugo Drax cheats at cards, a rumor he told Bond, but rumors from very reliable sources. He then suggests that if it got out that Drax was indeed cheating at cards, it would ruin his, “Hero of the Nation,” standing and embarrass the entire country.

“It might just turn out to be a fantastic run of luck,” M. admitted. Both men considered that for a moment, then M. broke the silence again, “He only plays bridge.” He then looked Bond in the eye, “What system do you suppose Drax has got?”

Bond was thoughtful, then replied, “Maybe he signals a partner…”

M. hen invites Bond to the club that evening. He suggests that he and Bond could play Drax and his partner and perhaps Bond could detect any cheating.

“I could start by indicating that I know he’s cheating,” Bond offers.

“Excellent!” M. replies, “This is important, after all, this man IS the Moonraker Project!”

So, that’s how things kick off. Bond is to observe a national hero to see if he’s a cheater, and if so, to warn him. It’s a casual assignment, but don’t let that fool you, everything that follows is most definitely not casual.

Among my favorite “story moments” in Moonraker include: Fleming's imagination in full flight when it comes to the technological wonder of Drax's Moonraker compound, the subtle clue such as a faint impression on a map that proves to be a critical clue, a Drax related double murder that frustrates James Bond, and Gala Brand the authoritative policewoman who practices jiu jitsu and takes a long time to warm up to 007.

And of course there are the high tech gadgets such as the "inspectoscope," an instrument for detecting contraband using flouroscope principles, a "shiner" cigarette case apparatus for cheating at cards, the columbite powered super engine that powered Moonraker, along with a impressive host of other devices provided by the British Secret Service Technical Devices Section. No Bond story would be complete with out them.

And underneath it all, quietly and forcefully brewing, like a seismic vibration beneath layers of bedrock, was the foreboding countdown to Moonraker's launch. An event hailed by the public as the work of a hero, but in reality, known to only a few...something quite different.

The book read quickly, almost a bit too much so, this intriguing story could've been 50 to 100 pages longer, but besides that, a brilliant showcasing of Ian Fleming's incredible storytelling prowess.