I got back into Bond from the comics adaptations that are being made by Dynamite, meant to be in keeping with the original tone of Ian Fleming's novels. I had read some of them over the years, but like most people, when I think of Bond I think of Sean Connery: Suave, sophisticated, urbane, vodka martini (shaken, not stirred), fast cars, the latest guns and gadgets, great clothes, and hot women. My sister and I used to watch all the movies again and again and we assessed the hotness of the women and their worthiness for Bond. The look had to be right, and increasingly, they had to have physical skills in addition to sexual ones (of which you actually never saw evidence, really, in the PG movies).

In rereading (through listening to) Casino Royale today for five hours in the car, I was struck by how dated and sexist the (1953) book is with respect to women, but if you like Bond films, even today's versions, you don't expect deeply feminist stories. Casino Royale is basically divided into three parts: 1) Bond teaching us to play Baccarat at the Casino Royale; 2) Bond being (extensively) tortured by the guy whose money he won, and 3) a romance Bond has with a woman named Vesper. There's also a kind of philosophical discussion in which Bond reveals he is burned-out, a sort of nihilist/existentialist, and a sophisticated by hard, unsentimental spy who has murdered to achieve the 007 designation but who is decidedly not in favor of working with women.

The mainly surprising part is the way Bind falls for Vesper, to a consideration of marriage. The surprising turn of events in the end may have something to do with Bond's cooly aloof relationship with women in the later works of the series, but my impression is that the first Fleming glimpse of Bond is both tougher (the torture, the murders, the unsentimental hard edge to his talk and demeanor) and then softer (he speaks of love and marriage in a matter of days?! Is this Romeo and Juliet?) than the Bond we meet in the movies, with the possible exception of the brooding Daniel Craig version.

My name is Bond. James Bond.

This is my first Ian Fleming's (1908-1964) novel about MI6 agent called James Bond. My dad used to bring us, his kids, to 007 movies when we were kids and I can still remember all the expensive cars exploding on the screen, shapely Bond girls in their bikinis, the high-powered guns and James Bond running, being chased by bad guys, escaping death in a millisecond precision.

I am heartened to know that Casino Royale, first published in 1953, was the first James Bond book. So, it was the intro book to all Bond novels. It also explained his character: why did he become an agent and more importantly how he became tough. So, I would think that this book has the more human James Bond. In fact, there are fewer actions here compared to what I saw in his movies. Here he was tortured without any clothes on and I could not believe how he was able to escape death. He also fell in love with his gorgeous partner whose secret was revealed in the end that made my jaw dropped. So I kept reading till the last sentence that again made my jaw dropped. Yes, this book can make your jaw drop several times. Easy read. Action packed. Masculine. Tightly written. Great until the last word.

I saw the 3rd movie adaptation several years ago and I liked it. Wiki says, however, that the original one was in 1954 and Bond was played by an actor called Barry Nelson.

n  n

But the 2006 most recent version was starring Daniel Craig.

n  n

It's amazing to see what 42 years can do to the character. Nelson looked plump, hairy, slightly cross-eyed and looks feeling cold while Craig is fit, buff, hairless, green-eyed and loves the sea. It could be the global warming!

I completely love the James Bond-movies; I've seen all of them and my boyfriend and I even went to the movie-exposition in Amsterdam last year (very awesome). When I came across a beautiful collection of all the books on the BookDepository, my interest was caught (yes, I'm a sucker for packaging thát much). As a bookworm, why not read the books by Ian Fleming, where the movies were originally based on? And so I did, starting with the first book in the series, published in 1953, Casino Royale.

"Mine’s Bond – James Bond."

In Casino Royale we get introduced with the character of James Bond; a 00 agent ("double o"), namely 007, working for MI6. The 00 Section is the elite of the secret service with agents that hold a licence to kill. Bond receives an assignment: he is to out gamble Le Chiffre, an agent of SMERSH and the villain in this book, in the Casino Royale in France. To complete this mission, he gets assistance of Mathis, from the French secret service, and Vesper Lynd.

"The villains and heroes get all mixed up. Patriotism comes along and makes it seem fairly all right, but this 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."

For me, the beauty of Casino Royale was the atmosphere. Ian Fleming describes every detail in a scene; from the suit James wears, to the curtains hanging in the room, to the rules of the game of baccarat. I understand that for some people this seems really slow and boring, but for me this was a delight to read. I just absolutely loved the atmosphere. Also, all the little "spy"-details, which I doubt are based on true facts, are quite funny. Like the hair Bond lays over his drawers, so he can see if someone opens it when he is out.

“A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.' ...
Just a moment. 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?”

What I didn't like, was the extreme sexism and women-unfriendly side of Bond. James has several rants in his head about the stupidity of women, especially Vesper. At one point, when she is kidnapped, he has a sort of conversation with himself stating that it is her own fault and that he will most definitely sacrifice her for the sake of the mission, if it would come to that. James Bond may seem like an charming womanizer in the movies; in the book(s) he is a harsh, cold and cruel sexist. Considering the fact this book was published sixty years ago and women weren't at the point they are now, I took the sexism for granted. But I can't say that I think that Ian Fleming was an enjoyable man.

"And then there was this pest of a girl. He sighed. Women were 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. One had to look out for them and take care of them.
"Bitch," said Bond, and then remembering the Muntzes, he said "bitch" again more loudly and walked out of the room."

Casino Royale was an enjoyable and easy to read book. I flew through it. I loved the atmosphere, the story was catchy and I'm definitely curious for the next part in the series. The torture scene that is also shown in the 2006 movie adaptation is absolutely epic. The only thing I disliked was the sexist side of Bond, which made me doubt the character of writer Ian Fleming himself. Yet, this remained a very fun read.

"People are islands. They don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate."

Surprisingly most of the plot of the movie is in the book minus the parkour scenes in Africa. Bond is a cold ruthless bastard. It's hard to get past the sexism of the era (The book was written in 1953.), and there's a lot of it in here. The plot is slow and plodding in places, especially the beginning. The excitement picks up after the baccarat scene. It's definitely a cold war era spy novel with lots of double crosses and twists and turns. Definitely not the best Bond novel, but first books for a character rarely are.

I wasn't sure what to expect because I had only ever seen Bond movies and never read any of the books but this was thoroughly entertaining. Everything in the book was there deliberately, there was no extra fat or unnecessary language, the characters all had rich back stories and the plot was really only getting started by the climax.

Call it a guilty pleasure, this book was just fun to read, mostly because I a) love Bond movies anyway and b) delight in sexist jokes, which made it easier for me to read Bond's anti-feminist rants and just giggle to myself. Here's one of my favorites, when Vesper Lynd gets herself kidnapped by the bad guys and Bond has to take the trouble to chase after them:
"This was just what he had been afraid of. These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they just stay at home and mind their pots and pans and leave men's work to the men. And now for this to happen to him, just when the job had come off so beautifully. For Vesper to fall for an old trick like that and get herself snatched and probably held to ransom like some bloody heroine in a strip cartoon. The silly bitch."

Mmm. I love the smell of misogyny in the morning.

In Bond's defense, Vesper doesn't do much too much to change his opinion of women and their overall uselessness. She's supposed to be some kind of radio technician, but never gets to demonstrate any shred of intelligence that elevates her above the average 7th grade girl. Her only good bit of dialogue comes towards the end of the book, when she and Bond are safe and on vacation together:
"The bath had been filled for him and there was a new flask of some expensive pine bath-essence on a chair beside it with his towel.
'Vesper,' he called.
'Yes?'
'You really are the limit. You make me feel like an expensive gigolo.'
'I was told to look after you. I'm only doing what I was told.'
'Darling, the bath's absolutely right. Will you marry me?'
She snorted. 'You need a slave, not a wife.'
'I want you.'
'Well, I want my lobster and champagne, so hurry up.' "

That's about as interesting as Vesper gets. The rest of the time she's busy running around after Bond, being referred to as "the girl" and saying things like, "Do you mind if we go straight into dinner? ...I want to make a grand entrance and the truth is there's a horrible secret about black velvet. It marks when you sit down. And, by the way, if you hear me scream tonight, I shall have sat on a cane chair."

Fascinating.

Bond, for his part, didn't say anything especially intelligent either and made me thank god for Daniel Craig and his writers. I couldn't decide which was more annoying: Bond and Vesper during the assignment when they made banal small talk and Bond speculated on how soon he would sleep with her, or after they survive and decide they're in love and go on vacation together. (and don't look at me like I gave the plot away, you knew it was going to happen.) I think it's the latter - once Bond and Vesper survive the kidnapping, all potential of being cool vanishes as they become the most irritating couple ever. Having to read about them schmooping their way across France, eating caviar, and calling each other "Darling," "My love," and "Dearest" was enough to make me vow never to read another Ian Fleming book again.

Anyway, point of review: movie version = awesome, book version = a delightful misogynist romp. Pick whichever you'd prefer.

"Well, it was not too late. Here was a target for him, right to hand. He would take on SMERSH and hunt it down. Without SMERSH, without this cold weapon of death and revenge, the MWD would be just another bunch of civil servant spies, no better and no worse than any of the western services."

And so begin the extraordinary adventures of the most famous of all spies. Had it not been for his involvement in bringing down the villain known as Le Chiffre, James Bond could just have been another one of such civil servant spies.

Unfortunately, this is the only aspect of the Casino Royale story that I actually liked. The idea of James Bond and his mission is what draws me to the books, but not in fact the character of James Bond himself.

James Bond, as a character, is an utterly unlikable, chauvinist, self-centered idiot, who happens to be good at playing cards but is otherwise pretty lucky to have anything go his way - whether it is his involvement with women or his actually staying alive.

I first read Casino Royale some years ago, shortly before the film was released, and really liked it for the plot and the fact that a card game could pose more danger to the world's biggest villains than any attempts of arrest or assassination. Incredible! However, I enjoyed that the book dwelt on thinking through Bond's moves at the baccarat table more than on action scenes.

However, on this particular re-read of the story, I felt more drawn to paying attention to the way Bond interacts with the world around him and was reminded why in some of the subsequent books I tend to root for the villains - I just can't stand James Bond.

Would I still recommend this book? Yes. I think it is important to demystify the legend (and the franchise - even tho I do enjoy the films!) and acknowledge that there was a time when the most popular of books was based on a character that was a snob, a chauvinist, a racist, a misogynist, an egotist, and an utter idiot.

2.5* rounded up.

I enjoyed these books greatly when I found them...in Jr. High School, I believe that's called "middle-school" now. In other words when I was around 13 years old. they hold up fairly well...better than the newer movies. Bond just doesn't ring true in some of the more PC adaptions of him lately, do you think?

This is the first Bond book...he meets SMRESH, gets tortured, almost loses certain body parts that are very important to him (and most men), gambles for high stakes, takes a lover...you know, just another day at the office for 007.

These are still pretty good reads, back then I would have rated them higher I suppose, but then at 13 I also read all the Man From UNCLE books.

The first Bond novel, dated but enjoyable, better than the movies in some ways. And don't be too shocked that James isn't exactly the super agent in the books he is in the movies. He succeeds, but tends to get kicked around a lot.

Edit: December 19, 2018 This novel is really two and a half stars, not three, but Goodreads doesn't let me give half stars.

The first thing to know about author Ian Fleming’s James Bond series is Fleming’s novels have a different James Bond character than the one in the movies. Bond is more emo, prone to grandiose thinking while at the same time committing terrible errors of judgement, and he is old-fashioned ignorant in his prejudices about women and people who are not Englishmen. The second thing to know is since the bad guys are demonically evil, there is graphic onscreen torture in most of the novels, including in this book, ‘Casino Royale’, the first book in the James Bond spy-thriller series. Unlike the movies, Fleming does not remove the agonies suffered by his heroic MC to offstage or give him the option of just-in-time rescues. Bond has more flaws and more sufferings and more scars than the movies show.

Almost every man in the post-war Western World needed a cartoon hero like James Bond to be invented, imho. He is a character absolutely designed to boost sagging, ahem, Western male morale after World War II on both sides of the Pond.

The James Bond in Fleming’s book is more emo than the Bond we have become familiar with from Hollywood movies, but Bond has an extreme sense of his masculinity both in the novels and the movies. He sometimes questions his bosses and his government, but he never questions his own manhood. That is what his best attribute is and where his power resides - masculinity. Bond’s exaggerated masculine gender attributes are the defining feature behind his physical prowess, moral compass and loyalties.

In fact, in ‘Casino Royale’ Bond almost loses his penis in the service of his country. The bad guy and crooked embezzler union leader, Le Chiffre, tortures James by tying him to a chair with the seat cut out so that Bond’s naked penis is hanging down. Le Chiffre uses a carpet beater to repeatedly smack Bond’s genitalia until Bond faints, then he wakes Bond up again and smacks Bond’s genitalia some more, for an hour...can this be any more symbolic?

Evil traitor/union leader Le Chiffre is desperate to recover the embezzled union money he used to gamble against Bond at the Casino Royale. He also is terrified of the Russian response to his concurrent embezzlement of secret Russian spying funds along with that from the French union members. He tortures Bond to make him reveal where he hid the check containing his gambling winnings.

After Bond is rescued and is in a French hospital, and in believing his penis is beyond recovery and permanently wrecked, he speaks of retiring to a friend co-worker spy.

Weeks later, Bond realizes he has recovered his mojo when he is able to have sex with a fellow spy, Vesper Lynd. At first upon recovery, he is distracted by a dream of marrying Vesper, settling down into domesticity and maybe becoming an accountant and having children and a mowed lawn - but he suddenly is reminded Evil continues to lurk threatening domesticity everywhere one may try to rest in peace. So, reinvigorated, he vows to end Smersh, the Russian assassination organization and enforcer of Russian spy loyalty, all self-doubts suddenly dissipated.


Many readers think the books are dated because of Bond’s (and maybe the author’s, too) prejudices, but I think they are missing the point of why and for which audience Fleming wrote these spy thrillers. They were intended primarily for British white men, most likely World War II veterans and Cold War enthusiasts, as a fantasy action entertainment in the 1950’s. The novels never were about entering any writing competition for a literary award or for a female audience. Earlier 19th-century American men would have categorized them as a type of ‘dime novel’ which were popular around the 1880’s, which were mythical adventure stories printed on cheap paper available for 10 cents (American dime novels usually were about action characters from a mythical Wild West involving Indians, killer cowboys and sheriffs, heroic bear-wrestling mountain men and train robbers, or later, paranormal gothics).

The James Bond spy stories are exactly like many such male-oriented thrillers today that I have come across (any updating of men’s thrillers have always been only skin deep). Women characters are ALWAYS big breasted, slender and gorgeous, and unusually feisty for a woman in these types of action thrillers, even today. Their intelligence has always been of secondary importance, but usually they are so smart and action-oriented because they have some kind of unusual backstory, usually involving a free-thinking father, even today. Explicit descriptions of cars, airplanes, and weapons are all HUGELY important to the plot, and every other chapter includes explosions, gambling capers, car chases or hand-to-hand fights, with a clock ticking down to a deadly situation, and a certainty that wild sex with the unusual woman protagonist as well as any evil female bad-guy antagonist will be coming up in some chapter before the end. The hero narrator is usually ex-military. Explicit torture and bleeding wounds are common. The Authorities at headquarters are ALWAYS wrong.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s such low-end adventure genre books I read that were intended for men seemed to always have scuba diving scenes. Now (the otts) it is mostly about drones and computers with plot connections to Muslim terrorists. ALL characters seem to know about every weapon ever made except the hapless and stupid civilians. The 1970’s thrillers for men always had ex-Vietnam vets and idiotic hippies who were brain-dead stupid as well as often ending up plain dead for real because of their excessive drug use. Any reader of badass plots starring action men characters throughout the history of male-action thrillers know alcohol is the ONLY respectable vice to drown PTSD miseries!

If you have a problem with low-rent male entertainment, don’t read them. Any popular grocery-store action novel written about men for men will offend your PC sensibilities. Male Romances are not cozies or literary or non-graphic or deeply thoughtful. The James Bond books will never be ok to read if you are a rigidly-doctrinaire PC female. Move along. These books are offensive to the sensibilities of most modern women. Full stop.



I have some additional personal musings about male psychology and male romance novels, such as the James Bond series, below. Without a doubt my thoughts are not PC, either.

Most men seem to be inordinately attracted to action, competition, pack hierarchy and sex. Full stop. They seem to find boredom worse than the threat of dying or physical harm. War satisfies many of these inborn masculine characteristics. Yes, I said it out loud. Bite me. However, many men discover war is WAY outside of their natural red lines, but usually this discovery is made only on the battlefield. But by then, no running away allowed, the mental challenge of the most extreme war excitement, injuries and fear MUST be faced regardless of politics or personality. Fighting in wars means all philosophies, religions, moral theories are left behind, as are all rules, laws and decencies. Yes, I know it is all true as if I had been there, though I have never been. I was raised as a female American child in an underclass home with addicted parents in the 1970’s, and I am well aware of how the formal civilized beliefs, laws, and rules of the middle and upper classes have no reality in the more feral and underserved environments away from all authorities, rules and laws. Ghetto homes can exist outside the boundaries of what people see on the surface as ghettoes. Addicted and mentally ill parents ALWAYS create hellish warzones for their children, so. I KNOW about war mentality and survival of the fittest and the lucky.


Once upon a time not so very long ago, in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, many Western World men who came back from fighting on the front lines of World War II believed deep down they were nothing but evil murdering or failed sons of b*tches after having seen the horrors and moral confusions of the World War II battlefield, and in personally having felt their sphincters loosen in terror under fire. Battles caused them to become mere frightened animals, not the heroic gods they had expected from themselves.

Many men could not forgive themselves after they returned to normal conditions of civilized behavior because of their real-world personal tests under battlefield conditions. Every man remembered scenes of personal cowardice or of necessary brutality and narcissism to survive war. They had seen friends, enemies or children blown apart in front of their eyes, which they could not stop seeing replayed again and again in their mind’s eye. God seemed to have evaded the military draft.

But in returning to their previous civilized life of complex rules and mores and religious judgements and responsibilities, to a city or farm community comparatively untouched by war or lawless brutality and thus comparatively innocent of any challenges to accepted social norms, many men discovered they could not forget the heart-pounding unthinking simplicity of the excitement or cruelty, even freedom, of war - the need to live only in the moment, the simple basic necessity of staying alive being the main business of every battle. The fact is, war is the high point of many men’s lives, the most amazing thing they have ever experienced. It was kinda wonderful as well awful in retrospect. Despite PTSD, they find themselves drawn back and back to the excitement of the violence, the terror, even the pain, like a tongue poking at an abscessed tooth. I know.

Emotionally frozen or confused after the veils of civilized social and religious beliefs were ripped out of many World War II ex-soldiers’ minds by the reality of murderously spilled blood, environmental filth and human brutality in war, many men wondered what was Life about, really, especially in those days of 8th-grade educations, consistent Sunday church attendance and no TV or internet. They returned home to unreal peaceful streets and the old rules of law or customary mores and class divisions. The ex-soldiers looked upon what they saw as their stayed-at-home clean happy religious Women/Family within what they now knew as the fake thin-skinned bubble of Western civilization. Many Women/Family had worked productively and industriously, illusions intact; but many ex-soldier men saw nothing but moralistic tw*ts without a clue of Reality. Sometimes, often, Rage, formerly directed at ‘the enemy’, was later often directed at government and leaders during the War; then, after coming home, some of them feeling tricked and abused by a Universe which was far more impersonal and mean than they had been taught it was, raged internally at the innocent vapidity of their families, neighbors, bosses and friends.

The ex-warrior men often developed soured hopes in finding new meanings to Life to replace the old illusionary ones everyone at home still had. A jealousy/disrespect of their families/society crept into some ex-soldiers’ hearts because of the Women/Children/Society’s continuing reliance on the old pre-war social innocence and their clearly personal untested philosophies and faiths. At the same time that the men may have felt scornful of their families’ civilizing routines and trustful reliance on what the ex-soldiers felt were disproved beliefs, the men’s judgement of themselves under the uncivilized brutality of war’s raw Reality is and I believe was often disturbingly too shameful to remember or discuss back in the homeland. Or the men were ashamed of how much they yearned to feel the excitement and purity, yes, the simple uncomplicated purity, again of the violence and daily threat of death they had escaped.

Yet most men are hungry for the warmth, comfort and acceptance of loved ones, and some pine for the innocence they had had in the arms of their mothers. Some ex-soldiers of World War II certainly yearned for their old accepted respectable civilized selves and fantasies and hopes they had had before the events of the battlefield.

How can male people revisit and relive their former excessively violent and exciting military lives, even if heroically dramatized, or if a reader who only wants to experience secondhand their wannabe daydreams about actual military or detective adventures, without any social or public condemnation or Reality filters? Enter male romances like the James Bond novels. Whatever you, gentle reader, may think about male predilections, biology, or social training, the fact is these genre books sell by the millions to mostly men, all over the world. Facts are facts.

In the real world of post-war Western grief, emotional devastation, and the resulting loss of belief in the value of social norms and faith which had been nurtured by the previous pre-war society and civilization, I also suspect it was decided by many of society’s movers and shakers and rainmakers that a fairytale heroic purposeful war with heroic soldiers should be emphasized for the social good of post-war Western civilization and general emotional health. It helped the moral cause of Western social restoration that the defeated Nazis had been so evil in fact, and that the Russian Communists became as aggressive and mean as the Nazis has been, echoing a lot of the Nazi tactics in invading other countries.

I think the impersonal war chaos and immorality of survival and death, and loss and destruction, was forcibly redirected and focused only upon a story of the war having been fought heroically for the preservation of the home front and family and honor and democracy values by many Western governments. After all, the patriotic heroism of soldiers isn’t untrue, but fighting wars is always a morally compromising business for soldiers and governments. I think the men and the most of the public needed the redirection of focus on a more simplified and uplifting moral version of war, both because of the downbeat lingering effects of World War II and the necessity to gear up for maybe a new war with Russia in the 1950’s. For example, the noir movies being made by Hollywood during and shortly after the war were terribly bleak and depressing, with morality of characters being compromised or destroyed, reflecting the attitudes of people recovering from World War II and the Great Depression. In the 1950’s, the American government was restructuring public morality to fight a possible new war with Russia and needing to push back against Communism infiltration from spying. Public opinion needed to be remolded generally into something more positive and cheerful, confident. After all, despite the morose post-war mood, the West HAD won the war!

Many of the ex-military men in America and England needed desperately a mirror held up to them explaining the war in terms more black and white, clarified and noble, than what they had actually experienced. They needed a positive moral compass restored inside of their hearts to replace what World War II had taken, for their own sakes as well as that of national interests. To some professional social reengineers, this meant pumping up the volume on masculinity and on being male. Being male was promoted as being heroic in itself, regardless of performance in war or society. I think it was and is an attitude they wanted to promote similar to those parents today who supposedly teach their children they all are A+ no matter what effort, or lack of, they put into being productive or successful. (All the children have to do to be the best is to be breathing, supposedly.) Well, American men were told that being male was their free ticket to being the best in the 1950’s, and the more masculine they were, the more better they were than other people. It appears English men needed to glorify masculinity as well. (Men are apparently the emotionally frail sex, gentle reader.) Masculinity became defined more and more as being a tough hard emotionally-dead guy, always the boss in charge of the weak - meaning primarily being in charge of women. Of course, that meant women had to be socially ‘emasculated’ and redefined as less than after being emasculated. Emasculation was accomplished by firing women all over America from factory jobs and forcing them back inside houses to stay pregnant and vulnerable, specially tasked to raise four kids minimum (to grow more men to fight Communists - a double win-win). Men, to be better than, had to have something to be better than. This was a real thing done to prepare Americans to fight Communism and restore citizens’ (men) resolve to fight another war. (Only men seem to really have most of the attributes for fighting wars. Truth.)

England was suffering a crisis of faith and morality and a sense of losing power, too, after World War II. The war ended the British Empire. They lost control over half of the world, gentle reader! That would deflate any man’s, um, ego.

This is where the spy character James Bond comes in. ‘Casino Royale’ was written in 1952. Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, was a World War II British navy commander.


“Fleming worked for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War and was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of the 30 Assault Unit and T-Force intelligence units. His wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail, and depth of the James Bond novels.”

from Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_F...


What do we care about the nonsense of what defines masculine identity in these modern times, except to somehow tame the violent abusive bastards among them. Still, I have seen every Bond movie. I can’t decide if Sean Connery or Daniel Craig is my favorite; but omg, they are the two actors who give a performance of being the most brutal and hyper-masculine fantasy male of the many actors who have been in the role of James Bond.

Damn those genetic influences...and worse, most of us in GR are writing HUGE reviews about what is essentially a B-side cultural novel...

Rating: well, why not? 3* of five

Oops! Forgot one. This is 1967's film version I'm discussing, not the book, which was *awful*. That's not fair...it's not horrid writing, it's just so very very very dated and not in a good way. Kind of a time capsule of what was wrong with 1954.

Ya know...this film version was pretty damn lame, too. What redeems it is the sheer balls-out what-did-I-just-watch comedic pace of the thing. David Niven is LUDICROUS as Bond, but good as this character who isn't Bond but is called Bond. The return of Ursula Andress, this time as superspy Vesper Lynd (not to be mistaken for 2006's Vesper, completely different character), is notable; but the turn to the comedic and ridiculous is signalled by Bond having a child by Mata Hari, yclept Mata Bond.

It was one of the many moments where I rolled my eyes so hard I think I saw my brain. There's a bit with a flying saucer in London that convinced me I was having an LSD flashback.

Don't go into the film thinking it's a Bond flick and maybe it's okay...but frankly, it feels a little too Sixties-hip-via-Hollywood for me to do more than smile faintly.

Why watch it, then? Because David Niven is very good at being urbanely nuts. It's a meta-performance. If he arched his eyebrow any higher, he's lose it in his receding hairline. Because Ursula Andress is classic as Vesper. Because Orson Welles is endearingly baffled as Le Chiffre, seeming not to have seen a script before being shoved in front of the camera. It's like a Warhol-movie moment. If you're a straight guy, Jacqueline Bisset and Barbara Bouchet are pneumatically endowed. But Peter Sellers was a major disappointment to me. Clouseau was his only character at that point, I guess. Blah.

Fun. Not Bond, but fun. Sort of.

Man...he's cold.



Is James Bond a bit of a sexist? Yes.
I remembered being aware that he wasn't the most forward-thinking chap when it came to women after I first read this book, and the passing of 13 years hasn't made him look any better. He's definitely an ass, so this isn't a book you should hand to your son with an emulate this guy wink.



But what I had forgotten was that the first half of this (rather short) book was mostly just a card game. No cool spy stuff, no outrageous sexytimes, just a dull as shit card game.



And the second half was James getting his ass thoroughly beaten, only escaping death by sheer dumb luck.
This is NOT the suave James Bond we know and love.
This?
This is just a run-of-the-mill agent who got his balls thumped by the psycho he beat at baccarat. He eventually passes out, wakes up, gets thwacked on his nads some more, and right before the bad guy pulls the trigger, another bad guy shows up and kills the testicle-smasher.
Bad guy #2 leaves James alive presumably because he's going to need to show up in the next book and fumble fuck around again.



I had also forgotten how shockingly unintelligent he was when it came to reading the room, because Vesper is quite OBVIOUSLY hiding something from him.
But apparently, he thinks it's normal for women to make cryptic comments and cry after sex, so he never managed to put two and two together and come up with a double agent.



I might have felt a bit sorry for the poor bastard but he only wanted to marry Vesper because she was mysterious enough so that each sexual encounter would have the n  sweet tang of rapen to it.



Wait. Back up. What?



Oh, James. That's gross. Even for you.

Moving on.
This was actually interesting. Like, really interesting. I don't know how I missed it the first time around, but this version of James Bond isn't anything like the pop culture icon version of James Bond.
And that ain't a bad thing.



At the end of the day, I'm curious about the true story of this 007.
Does he get progressively less stupid with each book?
Only one way to find out.
n  Pew! Pew!n

I can acknowledge that this isn't the best book written in the spy genre. It does do a couple things extremely well. It is a great introduction to the famous James Bond. We learn a good bit about the legendary man without giving away too much. This causes an air of mystery and intrigue, which fuels the reader to check out more books in the series. It's a manly read for the civilized intellectual, chock full of sweet weapons, cars, and gadgets. Bond isn't some jock looking for a fight and is instead cool, calm, and collected. The writing sweats an addictive level of confidence any reader can be jealous of without coming off as pretentious. Without giving too much away, Bond is a skilled agent of death while still being vulnerable to human emotions and error. I think a lot of modern day authors mistakenly tend to put their main character into one of two buckets, God or wimp, making them unrelatable or simply unlikable.