My favorite James Bond yet! A thrilling card game, a sinister plot involving a nuclear warhead, and a good old fashioned car chase fulfilled all of my action needs. I quite liked the relationship Bond had with Ms. Brand (specifically that it didn't go at all as he expected it to) and the detailed writing in this novel is just absolutely luxurious.

Moonraker has a good premise, a very human and quirky main villian who has an interesting background, but the pace of the book is really slow. James Bond doesn't even fire his gun the entire book. I don't expect Bond to shoot someone every page, but he doesn't even engage in combat. There is very little hand-to-hand combat, a couple car chases, and no gunfire. If there is only a little action, I expect deep and thoughtful espionage to substitute, but the book doesn't give you that either. There are some interesting chapters here-and-there, I like the card playing scenes, and the story Drax tells bond at the end, but the book is kind of non-eventful as a whole. I have read several of Ian Fleming's Bond books, this one is at the bottom of the list.


The most infuriating thing about this book is the middle third section which gets bogged down in pointless detail about rocket ships, missiles and physics. We also get more pointless details about food and drink in the casino scene and this obsession gets so dull that at one point, I almost put the book down for keeps. Should you decide to read Moonraker be warned that it gets EXCEEDINGLY boring at points and will require some perseverence and resolve to get through. Another negative for me was the formulaic quality of some of the scenes. They appear to be lifted straight from Casino Royale without the freshness and tension of that first novel - there's the casino stand-off, the night-time car chase, the kidnapping of the girl, the kidnapping of Bond and so on. It does appear that Fleming was struggling with ideas at this point and it shows.

Moonraker gets fiendish with its plot and villains, making this the first of the James Bond books to feel like a James Bond movie.

Pure Cold War spy bliss, this book taps into our collective fear of mass annihilation after the successfully brutal bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A war hero has offered his vast fortune, ambition and knowledge to create and construct a missile supposedly capable of defending Britain in case of attack. A test of the missile is scheduled soon and Bond is put on security detail, because something just isn't quite right with the whole situation, so thinks he and his boss M.

Iam Fleming's own spycraft knowledge from having worked in intelligence during WWII is put to good use in these books. For a genre guy, he's also a decent writer. Doesn't it seem like all public-school-trained Englishmen know how to string along a decent sentence or two?

This is the first book in the series where we get a real decent in-depth look at M. It was a pleasant and unexpected treat to get to know M more intimately and see a little bit about what makes him tick. The book in general was fun, even if the bad guy and his righthand toady were a bit over-the-top...maybe it was fun because they were soooo dastardly!

The first great Bond novel. Once again, forget the silly (but enjoyable) 1979 Roger Moore film of the same name--no Dr. Holly Goodhead or Jaws here.

Casino Royal is a masterpiece of lean, bare-bones, near-poetic English thriller writing; Live and Let Die is Ian Fleming coming to grips with his new-found success as a writer and learning to write great prose. Moonraker is Fleming putting it all together in a story that is at once disappointing in its lack of exotic locales, yet experimental enough to expand Fleming's literary signature in significant ways.

The public disappointment was palpable in 1955, when MR became the first James Bond novel to take place solely in England. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. The Secret Service ran assignments outside England. Bond even states that his persona is too recognizable to be of use in-country.

But this lack of external locations serves to enhance Fleming's storytelling prowess. It forces him to make his story character-driven. Scenes of Bond at Target Practice and his excelling at cardsharp training cue the reader that MR is going to be different. Bond is unmasked as a boy playing at being a spy--albeit quite successfully. But he is also exposed as a talented and intelligent man of deception who cares more about succeeding at his job than his personal welfare--including his sexual appetites.

Gala (short for Galatea) Brand is a surprisingly deep "Bond" girl and earns her stripes alongside our hero despite his fixation with the mole on her right breast. She is a woman torn between traditional and modern roles and keeps the faith to both.

But the most impressive feather in Fleming's cap is his villain, Sir Hugo Drax. Where le Chiffre and Mr. Big were monstrously larger than life in their "cardboard" depravities, Drax is a fleshed-out man of such villainy that even Bond is taken in (despite all the evidence to the contrary--more than just his physical deformity) by his earnestness.

Gone is the clumsy flashback of M giving Bond his assignment. Indeed, the structure of the novel being separated into three parts is experimental for Fleming and greatly enchances his superlative narrative and tense dialog--which has a flare and rhythm all its own.

The story is a tad dated, and the impetus behind Drax's madness has been used enough to make his character seem passe, but Moonraker represents a high-water mark early in Ian Fleming's literary career.

Highly recommended for the James Bond enthusiast or anyone interested in Bond beyond the movies.

The third Bond I am reading, and in order. So after making ill-advised social commentary in his last book, Fleming begins to really get into the groove for which we know him best, fast action sequences. Bond battles against multi-millionaire and British national hero Sir Hugo Drax, who we discover is actually German, but these are the post war years, so almost all the villains in all the books that have villains are Germans. Fleming taps into our desires for wealth and luxury as we get into a card game at the world's most exclusive card club, where he of course bests Drax. In this, the third book, it's everything "exclusive": fine whiskey, martins, Bentleys/Alfa Romeos, Mercedes Benz, the finest weapons, all of it, and we want all of this vicariously through Bond.

And of course, fine women, here represented by Gala Brand, who is beautiful, of course, but also an accomplished scientist. It is almost as if Fleming were responding to early critiques of Bond as harshly misogynist, as he has Brand actually narrate a couple sections to articulate her resentment that Drax and the other men don't respect her as a scientist because she is a woman. And in the end, it is Brand that comes up with the scientific solution that saves the day. Oh, he's still a womanizer, and he gets the girl, but she also gets him, and while he's no feminist he at least is respectful of her mind.

So this story, with it's focus on a great and truly impressive missile launching, is about the sudden race to space in the fifties, Russia vs. . . well, in this case it is Britain instead of the US, but with the turn of the story it is also about fears about Germans turning those technological marvels into atomic bombs. 3.5, rounded up because he sticks to what he does best, fast action sequences, fast car chases, big, possibly ending-life-as-we-know-it explosions, high stake card games, escaping tight places with the girl. Fun. Now to see the movie again.

I continue to enjoy the James Bond novels, but I also continue to be shocked at just how different the novels are than the books. I really shouldn't be surprised, as the novels were written in the mid 50s and this movie, for example, was made in the last 70s. I find it a credit to the movie writers that they are able to take a story and restructure it into what the movie scripts finally became.

So in this one there's no outer space action, no giant snake fight (boo!), and no Jaws. But the Moonraker is instead a rocket that can deliver its atomic payload to anywhere in Europe from Great Britain. I'm guessing at the time that was science fiction. The villain is still Hugo Drax, but his background...well, I don't want any spoilers.

Overall this is a good novel, although a much more straightforward spy action/adventure story rather than the far out movie of the same name. Both are really good in their own way.

As a huge James Bond fan, I'm not sure why I have waited so long to read the novels but I'm glad I'm finally getting around to it.

If you like the movies, you'll probably like the books even with the differences. If you don't like the movies, you may still like the books because they are more realistic and pretty good reads.

Here you are, sat on a balcony in a faraway part of the world, at three o'clock in the morning because you have All The Jetlag - and have I mentioned this might be the hottest place you have ever been? - and you realise that what with one thing and another, you have not actually finished reading a book in close to a month.

The last time this happened was probably five or six years ago.

It has been a month full of very brain-intensive work, and you have only just managed to escape. Yesterday was the only day in the last fortnight that you weren't at your desk at 10pm. You are glad, at least, to work from home.

You are very tired.

What you are not, here, is terribly comfortable: it's your first trip abroad in an embarrassingly long time, and as you waited at the baggage carousel when you got off the plane, you heard the woman who was sat next to you, and who you chatted with on the flight (third flight in 24 hours) say excitedly to her friend, "She's from SCOTLAND. She doesn't like the heat."

On your e-reader, you are reading Moonraker, which someone has told you earnestly is nothing like the film. They are quite correct. You also, you realise now, have somehow picked the only James Bond book there is that doesn't leave the British Isles. It literally takes place in London and Dover. It assumes you know the rules of bridge. (Fortunately, you learned them at university, and can just about remember.)

Your hotel room has a coffee machine, but no kettle, and no teabags. You feel like you have arrived here, not just from the UK, but also from actual 1955.

Actual Rating: 4.5 Stars

Ian Fleming continues to surprise me pleasantly. It is popular to think that his James Bond novels were dated, sexist and offensively quaint in their attitudes and anyone who judges their attitudes through a twenty-first century perspective would be doing himself or herself a disservice. Yes, a lot of Fleming's writing is indeed a product of his time and we cannot condone him for that. But why miss the solid storytelling qualities, his gift for both suspense and romantic chivalry and the general atmosphere of high-stakes peril and excitement for all these things?

"Moonraker" is the fifth James Bond novel that I have read and it is so far the strangest and simplest that I have read. The action takes place, not in any exotic location like Japan or Jamaica, but in good old England, shuttling from the luxurious gambling rooms of the Blades Club in the first act to the hills of Dover in the subsequent sections. The plot is utterly simple - James Bond chances upon Sir Hugo Drax, the famous Columbite King of England, who is also heading the highly touted Moonraker defense project for the nation, when he discovers that this widely loved millionaire, for some strange reason, cheats at cards. What begins from that point, after a thrillingly orchestrated game of wits between the gloating Drax and the coolly taciturn Bond, is a fairly simple and even routine detective story in which Bond has to investigate whether the missile launching site at Dover, which houses Drax' gift to England, holds some dark secrets of its own or not.

So far, so simple, indeed. But Fleming was a more gifted writer than he usually gets credited for and even as "Moonraker" is more grounded than those vivid flights of fancy that other Bond novels take us on, his calibrated style of writing, enlivened by wit, a roving eye for detail and also stirringly imaginative in places, ensures that we are gripped effortlessly into the thickening twists and turns that come into the tale. Fleming expertly balances tension and an unmistakable sense of apprehension with plenty of warmth, camaraderie and even tender romance in the proceedings and by portraying his own hero with more congeniality and lending him a welcome shade of chivalry and cool-headed charisma, he even makes Bond appealingly winsome and wise as a hero to the reader in the best sense possible.

The tension escalates dramatically by the time we wind into the second act of the novel - the practice launch of the Moonraker is just a couple of days away but there has already been a ghastly murder and an inexplicable suicide and a whiff of paranoia can be scented in the launching site even as Drax is trying to run his outfit like a tight ship. Bond encounters Gala Brand, a Scotland Yard detective dispatched with the same mission as him to discover a rat and I will come to her again in this review; together, they discover more than just a rat and the damning, devastating truth of their findings results in a startling, shocking twist that comes right out of the blue and vindicates all their suspicions in one dangerous stroke.

By the time Fleming takes us into the third and final act of the novel, our nerves are already frayed and fevered with the surfeit of quietly simmering tension and this brings us into a desperate, breakneck car chase unwinding from London to Dover, a battle of gears and wits and grudges that culminates in truly devastating fashion too. "Moonraker" is a superb slow-burn thriller for most of its part but as the novel arrives at its intensely dramatic denouement, Fleming proves that his penchant for action and danger is still worthy and one will be sweating pensively as one devours the final thirty pages, driven to the edge of the seat to find out if Bond and Brand will indeed save the day or not.

There are a few niggles, though. For one thing, Drax, while initially so full of mysterious promise and capable of genuine enigma, fizzles out in the climax when it is revealed that he is merely another deranged villain with a diabolical plan who can be outsmarted with just a little logical thinking. In all the Bond novels I have read before this, the villains have been supremely intelligent and always a step ahead from Bond - Blofeld, Dr. No, Goldfinger and SMERSH - and they have really given Bond a tough time. Drax succeeds at that too but one expected Fleming to flesh him out a little more interestingly - he is merely a gloating, delusional megalomaniac who trips over his self-confidence fatally and thus becomes easy game for Bond and Brand to tackle.

But Brand, the heroine of this Bond novel, more than compensates for that. For most part, the women in Fleming's other novels are merely there for mostly decorative parts - other than Vesper Lynd and Teresa Bond, of course - but Gala Brand is indeed the finest heroine that Fleming has ever created - drop-dead beautiful yet also extremely intelligent, self-assured, tactful and even heroic and quick-witted till the end. Together with Bond, who cannot take his eyes off her at first and who later grows to care for her and treat her as an equal, she makes for an admirably charming protagonist upon whom the fate of the whole of England depends. There are also lovely, lovely episodes in between the action and suspense when Fleming lets these two spies bond and befriend each other in the most unhurried and mesmerising fashion. When disaster strikes them both, the two rescue each other from certain death and this only deepens their bond and distinguishes it interestingly from just a case of infatuation or sexual attraction.

It is this wonderful core of tenderness in this novel that made me rate "Moonraker" so highly - that and of course, the excellently orchestrated suspense that simmers slowly and steadily to a boiling point of pure terror. And, oh, also that ending, the victorious yet oddly bittersweet note with which Fleming ends his novel - an ending that would take you by almost heartbreaking surprise. Read it from cover to cover to find out for yourself.

n  ***2018 Summer of Spies***n

The oddest so far in the James Bond series. I was about two thirds of the way through when I started to wonder when something of significance would happen! The last third, however, held all the action that I’d been asking for.

A very slow start, back to Bond & his card expertise. Having just read Tim Powers’ Last Call, which heavily involves poker and other games of chance, I was maybe a bit worn out with the card games! However, what I did find fascinating in the opening pages of the book was Fleming’s description of James Bond’s schedule:

”It was the beginning of a typical routine day for Bond. It was only two or three times a year that an assignment came along requiring his particular abilities. For the rest of the year he had the duties of an easy-going senior civil servant—elastic office hours from around ten to six; lunch, generally at the canteen; evenings spent playing cards in the company of a few close friends, or at Crockford’s; or making love, with rather cold passion, to one of three similarly disposed married women; weekends playing golf for high stakes at one of the clubs near London.”

This is Fleming, the now-married man, describing his life during his stint in naval intelligence! It could almost have been written by his biographer, Andrew Lycett.

The third book in the Bond series, this is first one in which Bond doesn’t get the girl. I found the last sentence to be a bit sad: “He touched her for the last time and then they turned away from each other and walked off into their different lives.” Fleming drew so much from his personal life for these books that it makes me wonder who he had in mind when he wrote such a melancholy final line.

The only reason I began listening to this series of James Bond audiobooks is to get to this volume and hear Bill Nighy reading it. The readers of the two previous books were fine (Dan Stevens and Rory Kinnear), but to say that Nighy is the best reader is like saying a perfectly prepared prime rib is better than a Big Mac; there’s just no competition, really. For me, Nighy will forever be Samwise Gamgee, and his reading of Moonraker confirms that he is an amazing voice performer, not only of one character through an entire audio drama but of multiple characters in a novel. He brings in much more distinction of dialects for the characters, and it’s never a challenge to tell who’s talking at any given point.

The story itself is interesting. After two novels in which the villains and the stakes seemed surprisingly bland for an international super-spy, Moonraker is the first story that’s worthy of what I expect of Bond: a Cold War plot crafted by underground Nazis who seek revenge on the West and so partner with Russia to launch a nuclear warhead on London. That’s the kind of stuff I’m looking for in a cheesy, pulpy spy thriller. It’s a plot that in many ways would be right at home in the John Pertwee era of Doctor Who.

My complaint about the first two Bond novels is that Bond himself was incredibly clueless, missing obvious details that every reader picks up on many pages before he himself slaps his forehead and says, ‘Oh my! He really was up to no good!’ This book . . . well, it’s more of the same. The most astounding moment is when Bond catches someone going through his room, so he tosses the guy against a desk and injures him—but then he lets him run away, and Bond brushes it off with a casual, ‘Wellll, you know . . . he’s probably just one of those types of guys who enjoys going through other people’s stuff. No harm done, really. I don’t even need to mention it to anyone.’ Does that guy turn out to be an undercover Nazi who is working to annihilate London? Yes. I say, good show, Mr. Bond.

Something that intrigues me about these novels, and that I wasn’t expecting, is Bond’s attitude toward women. Obviously, there is a surface of misogyny; there’s no getting around that, nor is there any excuse for it. But deeper than that, the character becomes more interesting. Because though he is impatient with women in general, and often dreams longingly of getting away with some woman or other, what Bond seems to be seeking most desperately is the woman, a woman he will propose to and spend the rest of his life with. And what makes him take notice of a woman is not simply her physical beauty (though of course each woman he works with in the series just happens to be physically stunning; sigh), but her intelligence and professionalism. He’s seeking someone he can regard as an equal, not a subordinate or a mere “trophy.” Each of the books has had a moment in which Bond believes he is about to pop the question and begin a married life, which is what he most wants. In each book, that dream is thwarted, and Moonraker is the most interesting. In the end, he doesn’t get the girl, and he has to confront his assumption that surely any woman would be thrilled to have his attention. No, he realizes, it’s not true. Everyone has her own story, and he’s not nearly so important as he wishes to believe. It’s a surprisingly touching conclusion to the novel.

As a side note: I haven’t seen the movie version of this book, but because the movie poster features James Bond in a spacesuit, I was totally expecting this story to go into space at some point. It does not. At all.

I'm in awe of this title. MOONRAKER. Raking on the moon. Or maybe raking the moon? What does it mean? It's so evocative--something ominous and technological. When I was a kid I had never seen a James Bond movie, but I played the video game GOLDENEYE. In the game, the Moonraker is different from all other weapons that Bond carries. It's a handheld gun the size of a rifle, but it fires lasers, and because of that, it has "infinite ammo." And you can only get one in a level that looks like an underground Egyptian temple. I thought there was really nothing cooler in the whole world than getting to shoot a Moonraker at the bad guys while trying to escape a sandstone tomb.

The book MOONRAKER could not be more different from the movie MOONRAKER (I am serious; no content is the same. In the book Moonraker is a nuclear missile, and in the movie, it's a spaceship), and neither of them lived up to the concept of Moonraker that the video game delivered. The book is not as fantastic, and the movie is not as cool.

I was hoping Moonraker the novel would be a good beach read. The teal cover with the missile looks so good, and it's not very long. The setting in Dover is cool, the Moonraker nuclear missile is cool...all of the pieces really should be in place. But then it falls flat. Not enough happens, and what does happen is not exciting or surprising. I wasn't so much disappointed by this as I was baffled that anyone out there ever enjoyed it. Ian Fleming himself writes like someone who doesn't enjoy reading.

Easily in my top three Bond novels. Moonraker’s high point for me comes from a three chapter description of the most exciting game of bridge ever played.