n  Bond began here...n


n  BOND, JAMES BONDn

I've fan of James Bond films all my life and I've seen them all.

However I hadn't read any novel (at the moment of this review) so I thought that it was good idea if I'd read a first novel of James Bond has to be the first book where everything started.

Hardly I was a newbie on Bond world as to need to read the first book, but I thought that it was the proper thing to do.

I have clear that each story is self-contained, so I will read more Bond novels in the future but not in the publishing order.

Well, it's clear that since it was the first novel, the character and his world is just starting to get into place and it's still in a heavy development.


n  LICENSE TO KILL - BRAND NEWn

I feel that this book is not the best way to show the character.

Since Bond doesn't do anything so extraordinaire and he is saved several times by others, when he got into troubles where he is unable to get out by himself.

Hardly the scenario that one wants to read about of THE super spy, the most famous of all.

Also the events are set in an odd way in the narrative, since the novel is titled Casino Royale, and while Bond was a lot of time there, a lot of happening in the story occured after of the events in the casino, and even there are a lot of happening after dealing with the main villain.

So it's hard to understand where is the real climax of the story.

One big merit is the dark tone of the novel, since there are a lot of gruesome events and situations that I think it wasn't so regular in novels in the 50's.

The good thing is that it's short book, barely less than 200 pages, so you don't invest much time to read it.

"A dry martini," Bond said. "In a deep champagne goblet. Three measures of Gordon's, one of Vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"

When I was about ten years old, my mom took me and my sisters to see Live and Let Die. That was my introduction to James Bond. It wasn't the sort of movie we were normally allowed to see, so naturally, we loved it. Paul McCartney's theme song still brings back happy memories when I hear it on oldies stations. "When you were young, and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live (you know you did you know you did you know you did)..."

Casino Royale is the novel that introduced James Bond, Agent 007 to the world in the 1950s. Bond takes on a Soviet operative called "Le Chiffre" at Casino Royale. He needs to wipe out Le Chiffre's financial reserves at the Baccarat table. Long explanations of the rules of Baccarat are followed by even longer play-by-play descriptions of the gambling showdown between Bond and Le Chiffre, making this portion of the book about as dry as Bond's favorite cocktail.

The rest of the book does have some charm and appeal, if only for its quaintness. The methods of spycraft seem almost prehistoric against the dazzle of current technology. The trajectory of the plot was rather predictable, most likely because I've read so many other spy novels. Almost as soon as a new character was introduced, his or her real motives were transparent to me, and I could see what the outcome would be.

The book is short and semi-sweet, and worth reading if only for nostalgic purposes. AND, it has just about the best dang last line of any book I've ever read! I'm about to tell you what that last line is, which will be a serious spoiler, so stop here if you're planning to read the book and you don't like spoilers. It may be that you have to have read the book to fully appreciate the last line, but I'm going to share it anyway, just because it made me laugh.

SPOILER WARNING! LAST LINE OF THE BOOK COMING UP!



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"The bitch is dead now."

Pure James Bond.
Smoke, alcohol, women, guns - everything you'd expect from this book is there.

Hovering between 3.5 and 3.75, and weighing in at 181 pages, Casino Royale is the first installment of the 14-book James Bond series. The Bond of this novel will probably come across as a bit of a surprise to some readers who are familiar with his larger-than-life, superspy cinema persona, which oozes sexiness, indestructibility, confidence, and machismo. Here he comes across as more of a misogynistic, flawed individual, prone to self doubt and a bit of introspection at times -- more human than the often over-the-top movie portrayals have led us to believe.

Casino Royale begins rather slowly, with Bond on assignment to take down Monsieur Le Chiffre, a man with adopted name whose aliases include "variations on the words 'cypher' or 'number'." He is a Soviet agent (remember -- this was written in 1953 and the Cold War is already on fire) entrusted with fifty million francs to finance a Communist-controlled trade union in France, a group which could prove troublesome as a "fifth column" in case of war with the USSR. Le Chiffre, it seems, has parlayed the trade union funds into several incredibly bad investments and is currently on the edge of financial disaster. Bond's masters believe the only way to bring him down and destroy his standing with the Soviets is to bankrupt him entirely; but to do this they need someone who can outdo him at cards -- it seems that the enigmatic Monsieur Le Chiffre has come up short and is using his skills at baccarat to try to make up his losses. Bond is the perfect man for the job; he is sent to the casino at Royale-Les-Eaux to watch Le Chiffre and then take him on at cards. One serious complication has arisen: agents from SMERSH, an acronym for Smyert Shpionam, "death to spies," have caught wind of Le Chiffre's activities and are on his tail, unbeknownst to Le Chiffre. Bond's going to need some help -- along with Mathis, a French intelligence agent, and Felix Leiter of the CIA, London sends Vesper Lynd, a sultry, sexy woman whose involvement is at first resented by Bond. This is not going to be easy -- it isn't long until there's an assassination attempt, and that's only the beginning of Bond's problems.

I must say I was a bit surprised to find a more human, fallible Bond characterized here, one whose take on women is that

"women are for recreation. On a job, they got in the way and fogged things up with sex and hurt feelings and all the emotional baggage they carried around."

This Bond also is capable of questioning the rightness of what he does, capable of reflection in a world where "the villains heroes get all mixed up." As he notes,

"...the country-right-or wrong business is getting a little out-of-date. Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts."

At the same time, this Bond becomes the sum of his experience -- I won't say why or how, but he evolves from a man who loses himself in love into a hardhearted, cold, licensed-to-kill 007 with a single-minded mission, to "go after the threat behind the spies, the threat that made them spy."

The events in Casino Royale seem to set the foundation for Bond's long career and if you're looking for something lighter, it's actually quite a good read. It starts rather slow, but picks up quickly. In today's vast array of high-tech spy fiction, this novel may seem a bit old fashioned with little action, but more interesting here is Bond's character.

I'll also mention that a large number of reviewers were somewhat disgusted with Bond's attitudes toward women and the very apparent sexism that runs throughout the book, but hold on. This book was published in 1953, not 2013; it's highly unfair to judge the mores (read mor-ays) of a particular time or of the writer and hold them to today's standards. IMHO (which is indeed humble), giving a book a 1 or 2 star rating on the basis of its treatment of women some 60 years ago is just wrong.

The whole time I was reading this book, I was amazed at how this short little novel morphed into the action-packed thriller it became in 2006. If you're a spy fiction person, like I am, it's a definite no-miss; if you've seen the movies and want to know how it all started, this is a great resource.

The first novel about James Bond, the 00 agent, takes place at the Casino Royale. He has to outplay a French/Russian operative to take money away from the communists.

If Bond fails in his mission by losing at the card table, then British government will be directly funding communists. No pressure.

I have a thing for Bond. Cool under pressure, fast cars, looks fabulous in a tux...

I thought I would like this a lot, but I didn't. I don't think the story has aged well.

The best parts of the tale took place in the casino itself, the bar or the dinner table.

"Bond had always been a gambler... above all, he like that whatever happened was always one's own fault. There was only oneself to praise or blame. Luck was a servant, not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or to be taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not be confused with faulty appreciation of the odds. For, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck."

Bond certainly knows how to order a drink:"A dry martini," he said. "One, in a deep champagne goblet... three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, shake it until its ice cold and then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it? ... I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink is my own invention. I'm going to patent it when I can think of a good name."

His attitudes about women were particularly depressing: "As he drove, whipping the car faster and faster through the night, with the other half of his mind, he cursed Vespa and M for having sent her on the job. This was just what he had been afraid of. These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why they hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men?"

This blithering woman is going to put down the book now and back away slowly...

Recommended for... not blithering women?

I believe I'll stick to the films from now on.

"Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles." He laughed. "But don't let me down and become human yourself. We would lose such a wonderful machine."

James Bond, Secret Agent for M16, 007 with a license to kill. This was the 1st entry in Ian Fleming's James Bond series and introduces the world's most famous fictional spy in great fashion.

Bond is in France gambling his nights away at the Royale Casino. It all sounds enjoyable however this is part of a very dangerous and highly expensive mission that could cost the UK Treasury £20-million. An agent of the infamous Russian intelligence outfit SMERSH (Death to Spies) Le Chiffre is in a bit of dilemma. He invested £50-million of his employers' money without their approval into brothels and prostitution hoping to make a quick profit even though the initial funds weren't his. It should have been a sound investment, well, until prostitution was outlawed 3-months later. Le Chiffre, as an expert gambler is looking to recoup his losses by acting as the player/dealer in a super high-roller Baccarat tournament. Bond, as the secret services finest gambler is given the objective to play in this game under the guise of a Jamaican playboy millionaire, and bust the SMERSH agent. The outcome of which would be tragic and fatal for Le Chiffre. SMERSH is not an agency you want to be on the wrong side of.

In the novels, James Bond is very different from what he has morphed in to in the recent movies. Here, we see an attractive but scarred secret agent. Smoker of 70 cigarettes a day, huge drinker, misogynist, cold, and brutally efficient whenever given a task for his country. I'm not saying I agree with his sexist nature but when reading classics I take a step out of our socialisation norms, values and reality and try and place myself in the era of when it was written. Many of characters and trademarks of the series are introduced here for the first time such as dealing with the Chief of Security, M, his receptionist, Moneypenny, the famous "Bond, James Bond" line. At this point, 007's tipple of choice is not a Vodka Martini (Shaken not Stirred), but the Vesper. As a professional, he only allows himself one drink before he does his duty, but he makes it as large as possible as seen below.

Google: Here's how to make the Vesper according to Ian Fleming and James Bond: Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel.

As the first thriller in the series, it features a plethora of elements that have become "part and parcel" of Fleming's Bond adventures. Car chases, kidnappings, torture, betrayal, showdowns, and lovely ladies. The Baccarat showdown is far more intense and realistic than the Poker match in this novels Holywood cousin. I knew nothing about Baccarat but Fleming explains the rules to the reader as Bond is reiterating how the game is played to one of his colleagues. The supporting cast is highly likable including Mathis of the Deuxieme Bureau, Vesper Lynd from M16 (Russian Division) and my favourite recurring character from the books, CIA agent Felix Leiter. The torture scene presented here however infamous is quite famous now as it is presented almost identically in Daniel Craig's first Bond film. The main narrative is completed in about 180 pages. The remaining 48 pages are about Bond reflecting on potential retirement and maybe finding love with someone he has crossed during this harrowing mission. Just as Bond's icy shell starts to melt and he lets someone in the worst thing possible happens and the ending is unpredictable and pretty heart-wrenching.

I had a great time re-reading Casino Royale. It just missed out on a 5-star rating because I don't think it is quite as good as On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Goldfinger, Dr. No or From Russia With Love. A exhillirating and extremely entertaining spy classic that introduced James Bond - arguably the world's most popular fictional character.

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling--a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension--becomes unbearable and senses awake and revolt from it.

James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired. He always knew when his body or his mind had had enough and he always acted on the knowledge. This helped him avoid staleness and the sensual bluntness that breeds mistakes.

Thus begins Casino Royale, which in 1953 launched the exploits of British Secret Service agent James Bond. Until Harry Potter appeared in the rearview mirror of his Aston Martin, Bond may have been the biggest literary franchise of the 20th century, thanks in large part to the success of twenty-five (and counting) official movies. In terms of film franchises, Bond is second in sustained popularity only to Godzilla, with the jolly green giant generating twenty-nine Japanese produced movies and six American ones. Interestingly, Godzilla arrived in cinemas less than a year after Bond made his debut in booksellers. As a kid, I loved both characters. I still do.

The debut novel by Ian Fleming is stark and claustrophobic, with a handsome visual splendor, spareness of description and a bitter dose of nihilism. Racist and sexist epithets are occasionally thrown in like firecrackers but rather than come off as moral defects for Fleming or date the novel, give James Bond texture and combustibility. Compared to the comic book styling of some of the sillier movies, this is a gambling tale that features spycraft rather than a spy story that features a casino. At 48,000 words, I was able to shoot through it in forty-eight hours, roughly the amount of time one of Bond's missions might last.

Bond's assignment begins in the (fictional) town of Royale-les-Eaux on the coast of northern France, a resort town and site of an "elegantly dilapidated" casino. Bond takes a break from the roulette wheel, where he's actually been keeping an eye on the baccarat table and a gambler named Le Chiffre. He walks to his hotel and learns that ten million francs have been wired to him, approved by M, the head of his department in London. Bond's working capital at the casino now stands at twenty-seven million francs. After checking his room carefully for signs of intrusion, he goes to bed, alone, one hand on a .38 Colt Police pistol under a pillow.

According to a dossier prepared for M, Le Chiffre is a chief agent of the USSR in France and paymaster of a Communist trade union there. His loose spending habits--investing fifty million francs of Moscow's money in a failed chain of brothels--and embezzlement have likely drawn the attention of SMERSH, the Soviet umbrella organization dedicated to smashing agents (the acronym translates to "Death To Spies"). With operating capital of twenty-five million francs, Le Chiffre desperately seeks to refill the plundered union funds at the Casino Royale, where efforts to compete with the neighboring casinos has resulted in a well-publicized and anticipated baccarat bank this June.

Intrigued by the prospect of destroying Le Chiffre at the baccarat table, M selects Bond, one his agency's feared double 0's, a designation earned by agents who kill a man in the line of duty. Veteran of a casino assignment in Monte Carlo and a talented gambler in his own right, 007 is tough as well, a skill he may need if he comes into contact with the two bodyguards Le Chiffre keeps. Bond passes himself off as a fop gambling away a family fortune made on tobacco and sugar in Jamaica. He's assisted by René Mathis of the French Deuxième Bureau and Felix Leiter of the CIA, and to his chagrin, a girl from headquarters, personal assistant to the chief of Section M.

Mathis and Bond exchanged cheerful talk about the fine weather and the prospects of a revival in the fortunes of Royale-les-Eaux. The girl sat silent. She accepted one of Bond's cigarettes, examined it and then smoked it appreciatively and without affectation, drawing the smoke deeply into her lungs with a little sigh and then exhaling it casually through her lips and nostrils. Her movements were economical and precise with no trace of self-consciousness.

Bond finds the girl to be professional and easy to converse with. He recognizes their sexual chemistry and would like to sleep with her, but only after their assignment. Bond later learns her name is Vesper Lynd. Fleming not only pauses to show 007 and Vesper at work--the pair communicate vast amounts of information about each other in the way Bond offers her a glass of vodka, before her amused glance forces him to suggest a cocktail--but also illustrates the sensory experience of a European casino in the 1950s and how baccarat is played, with a round of twelve players dealt two cards with the option for a third, a winning hand adding up to nine and face cards useless.

To separate the novel from the movie, I should state that while Goldfinger (1964) or On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) are the films typically cited by Bond connoisseurs as the best of the series, with Sean Connery and George Lazenby playing Bond alternately, I'm actually most enamored by Daniel Craig's debut as 007 in Casino Royale (2006). In addition to Bond being reintroduced as rougher and more muscular--a killer--than ever before, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) nearly eclipse 007 in intrigue. The bevy of beauties or deranged villains are interchangeable in a lot of these movies, but not this one.

Casino Royale functions succinctly and beautifully as a world parallel to the film series, beginning in the wake of World War II rather than the Swinging Sixties, and with a slightly rougher and more wayward Bond. For the 007 of literature, and the men who defeated the Axis Powers, Asian stereotypes are simply a matter of professional experience and women belong at home cooking or gossiping, not interfering in men's work. At least one of these prejudices--the one about women's work being in the home--are admirably and tenderly subverted in the course of the novel while the other is an aside that demonstrates Bond's self-isolation more than it does a belief by Fleming.

Fleming's writing is like an Esquire Magazine article without any of the hooptedoodle or parts for men to skip over.

Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. And luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared. Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued. But he was honest enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck.

Fleming adorns the novel with twenty-seven splendid chapter titles (8. Pink Lights and Champagne, 9. The Game Is Baccarat, 15. Black Hare and Grey Hound) which is something I always like. The story surges in momentum from team building to the big game, then Bond's torture by Le Chiffre and then Bond's romantic duel with Vesper Lynd. Fleming makes the stakes clear in each conflict, articulates both the physical environment and emotional environment succinctly and carries the characters honestly through to their inevitable fate. In contrast to some of the sillier movies in the series, the action is very grounded and there are barely any pyrotechnics, with playing cards and vodka taking precedence to gadgets.

My complaint--and where I think this novel comes up short in satisfaction to the best films of the series--is Fleming's habit of hewing too close to reality. Of the four characters who are killed, only one of them dies in front of Bond. The other casualties occur off the page and seem a bit perfunctory. If you're stuck on a door stopper of short fiction like I was (Edgar Allan Poe) or reading non-fiction that's particularly heavy or deep, I highly recommend giving Ian Fleming a try to blast some cool fresh air through the musty corridor. My reading docket is being revise to make way for the second novel in the series: Live and Let Die.

I give Casino Royale a low rating because it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination compulsive. I sort of enjoyed it, but I could live without it. Which doesn't mean I'm not going to read the other Bond books -- I am, at least a few, because Bond is this huge cultural thing that I've absorbed by osmosis, but only to some extent. The books are actually my first direct encounter with Bond.

(Yes, I lived to the age of twenty-two years and two days before I ever had a direct encounter with James Bond. Seriously.)

It's misogynistic and melodramatic, and the number of monologues is ridiculous, but there's something compelling about Bond and the world he inhabits. Part of it is trying to see what so many have seen before me.

Casino Royale, first published in 1953, started the whole James Bond craze. It was the first of twelve Bond novels by Fleming although after the success of the Bond movies, others were commissioned to write many more Bond novels. For purists though, there was only one Bond writer and only one Bond actor. Though it was the first book, it was not the first feature movie in the series, that being Dr. No.

The plot is a little odd for what we’ve all come to think of the high stakes Bond situations. Le Chiffre is a Soviet agent in France and has been relied upon to raise the French unions, whose money he invested in a chain of brothels right before brothels were outlawed. To make up the missing money, he is hard at work playing baccarat in a French casino. Bond’s task, should he choose to accept it, for Queen and country, is to play opposite Le Chiffre and bankrupt him. Thus, begins a high stakes card game – stakes that could bankrupt anyone – in the millions and each moment of the game is set out deliberately.

Until the end of the game, we readers are treated to a series of assassination attempts on Bond, quite daring and public, to keep him from completing the game. There aren’t quite the number of action packed scenes we have come to expect in a Bond story.

Bond’s attitude toward women is a bit different here. He is taken aback when his partner is a woman and has misgivings about whether she could possibly be up for the job. And, while he is ready to bed her immediately, eventually finds himself falling for her charms and perfect figure. Indeed, he even thinks at one point that he wants to marry Vesper.

Bond, moreover, is not necessarily as gung ho about the job as one might expect, particularly after suffering capture and torture and wondering who is the hero and who the villain. He is here a bit philosophical about his role in society and whether the license to kill that made him a 00 agent was worth it morally.

Fleming's first James Bond novel is better than brain candy, though it is a quick one-sitting read. Notice how the characters are characterized by their ciragettes -- Felix Leiter only smokes Chesterfields, Bond smokes a Turkish/Balkan blend made by Morelands on Grosvenor Street, Le Chiffre smokes Caporals and Gauloises. Curiously, I found Bond's misogyny in the beginning and his sensitivity at the end a little overwrought, but I liked the Vesper Lynd character much more than her counterpart in the recent film. I was glad, also, to have finally had the game of Baccarat explained to me, and I have a new strategy on the roulette table.

[Some unusual diction was occasionally distracting, particularly the frequent colloquial use of "directly" instead of "as soon as". I didn't know you could do that.]

SMERSH is a *far* more terrifying and interesting enemy than the SPECTRE of the Bond films.

The movie is way better. The spy story is good, but the casino scenes and the romance are terribly boring. Clearly, what constitutes cool has changed a lot since 1953. I rather doubt that smoking 70 cigarettes a day and guzzling stiff drinks would keep your mind sharp and your body in shape enough for spy work.

I expected misogyny, but not the bloodcurling levels of it:

"These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave the men's work to the men? "

Vesper is incredibly beautiful, but alternately cold, or feeble, emotional and submissive. Bond wants to screw her from the start (apparently this was ok in work situations in the fifties). Fleming's idea of a sex scene is crude, and he thinks rape is something to spice up your love life with:

"And he knew that she was profoundly, excitingly sensual, but that the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the tang of rape".

I enjoyed the action, and the writing was pretty good, but the rampant misogyny, Vesper's stupid characterization, and the insipid, creepy love story really turned me off.

I'll be honest, I had a hard time with this book. I was about to DNF it. The first 70 pages were painful for me and it wasn't working. I think this series is very lucky that the movies were so awesome. Otherwise, this series would probably be forgotten by now.

The book is less than 200 pages and it took me forever to read. Once I got to the actual baccarat game, that was interesting and the pace picked up. I was into it and read the last 100 pages in 2 days. The game was dramatic and interesting to me. The ending was different than any movie and weird, so out of character with how I think of Bond. He falls in love - how strange. I know it has happened in the movies, but it's unusual. There were also some creepy lines about the sweetness of rape in here. Ugh.

Even though the beginning was so heavy with spy talk and initials I didn't know what they meant and spy language, the middle and end saved this story enough for me to give it a gracious and generous 3 stars, but only just. I am probably being too generous.

I enjoyed the movie and I always like to catch the newest movie with my dad. It's our thing, if possible. I much prefer the movie to the book. I will eventually try another one of these to see if Ian gets better, but I must say, I was disappointed in this. The movie really upgraded the character and made Bond much more likable. I won't be reading this again.