Вял и уморен завършек на Блофелд-трилогията. Първите две трети от книгата ни удавят в описателност, запознавайки ни с японските традиции и философия по не особено вълнуващ начин. Едва към края има някакво по-интересно действие, но дори то не е кой знае колко оригинално или грабващо. Две звезди и половина.

This could have been a train wreck, but somehow Fleming doesn't make a Japan-based thriller turn into a completely embarrassing racist train wreck.

I'm not saying it doesn't have problems, but the descriptions of Japanese culture are fairly accurate. Sure, it's exotic, but it's also the mid-60s. Japan was still a decade or two away from being a cultural presence in the west.

I enjoyed Tiger Tanaka, the head of the Japanese Secret Service, and Bond's ally. Their mission: travel from one city to another, eating, drinking, and screwing the entire way. At the end, Bond has to kill someone. But, what a happy accident, it's someone Bond really wants to kill anyway!! So upcite!!! And I have a special affection for this year's Bond girl: "Kissy Suzuki."

It's not the strongest plot, but it is well-told.

Not nearly as epic in scope as Thunderball and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, You Only Live Twice is a decent story that has some flaws to it that keep it from the upper tier of Bond novels. The focus of Japanese culture and the place Japan has in the world after World War II is interesting as it gets portrayed in several perspectives that are very much a product of its time.

Set in Japan and written with knowledgeable details regarding essential do’s and don’ts as advised by Tiger Tanaka, Head of the Japanese Secret Service, to Bondo-san, that is, James Bond before pursuing his heroic mission, the fiction’s title “You Only Live Twice” has since been mysterious to me from its 1967 movie title. I mean its translated meaning is something philosophical, its context required for more understanding. In fact, it’s taken from the first line of a 17-syllable haiku by Basho, the most famous Japanese poet (1644-1694) in the Edo period. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuo_...)

Without a doubt, my favorite Bond book of all. Not only because I am a far-gone Japanophile, but because so much of this book blooms a sweet sensitivity that the others I've read do not possess. Bond has his final showdown with Blofeld and a knock to the head renders Bond with near total amnesia. The "Bond-girl" here, Kissy Suzuki, mends him and keeps him. Bond lives two lives.
It's probably a secret dream of most men to be able to innocently disappear from their own life and live a guiltless second one in a completely foreign country with an exotically beautiful woman.

The 12th book in the James Bond series. Fun and entertaining.

My dumb ass is all worried for James Bond. . .knowing it's several more books in the series. This is my favorite. More lovely bond vacationing than action which somehow appealed to me.

Third star literally only for Kissy Suzuki, a nice return to girls appearing more than ten pages before the end and ACTUALLY BEING IMPORTANT TO THE PLOT. Otherwise this is maybe the literary equivalent of the later seasons of the office, when they decided the camera people needed to be characters. Kind of interesting, but also kind of cheap.

mildly inappropriate

Instead of being fired, a depressed and out of sorts James Bond receives a next to impossible mission on a remote Japanese island. There's a lot that's unbelievable here. I'll just start with Bond successfully impersonating a Japanese man (ridiculous!) and a secret missile base hollowed out of a dormant volcano that no one else knows anything about. But it is James Bond and don't think too hard fun so I went with it.

Despite its flaws, I'm now somehow reading more James Bond. There's something about the picture of James Bond's character desperately trying to understand another culture (and thinking he has somehow passed) that's appealing. As little as he really knows about Japanese culture, for instance, he still attempts to figure out the psychology of the Japanese, in everything from rock-paper-scissors to high-stakes espionage. I guess it's just funny in a weird sort of way, but entertaining nonetheless!

Great exotic setting, great feel of time and place, a ompletely bizarre undercover assignment, some clever bits, and a wild resolution.
The Bond books aren't great, but they are such an interesting time capsule of a 60's that probably was no more real than Agatha Christe's England, but you still get swept up in it, because Fleming puts so much detail in this you buy into this world he's created.

Plus, Bond is still one of the coolest guys in literature.

The last of Fleming's books published in his lifetime, and what a dishonourable way to go! Shimata!

80% of the book have no action (not in the genital sense) whatsoever, and little, almost none of, spy or detective work. The book could have just as well been an essay on how Bond spent his Japanese holidays and entitled 'You Only Live Twice: Shagging Chicks & Getting Pissed': the whole jolly trip from Tokyo to Kuro is a dull sequence of sightseeing, whores and sake flasks, nothing more. Well, apart from some of the stupidest dialogue in between some of these activities.

This Book's Villain is our good acquaintance Ernst Blofeld. Remember how he tried to steal nukes, blackmail the whole world and cover his operation up with a treasure hunt (Thunderball)? Excellent plot and a great cover. Remember how he tried to destroy Britain's agriculture with biologigal weapons and cover it with a quack allergy clinic in the Alps (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)? Well, the cover is stupid this time, but the plot still is intriguing.

Now, what would he do to propagate his evility in Japan? What a silly question, of course he'd tell everyone he's a botanist, buy an estate in a remote province, plant poisonous plants all over it and 'accidentally' leave a few holes in the fence, so that the honourable-suicide-obsessed Japanians would come and die there at their will.

Devious! Doctor Blovorkian threats the Universe once again!

I'm not going to uncover the reason why he does it. It is utterly moronic and implausible and senseless. It's not even impressive, there is nothing clandestine going on, no secret laboratories designing a poison that would destroy life in the Pacific, or something. It's all trivial and brainless.

I should also remark the author's attitude towards Irma Bunt, who on her first appearance, in 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', was an unpleasant and nosy lackey of Blofeld's, and who in this novel became Blofeld's quasi-wife (which breaks the character for Blofeld, since in Thunderball he is said to be celibate) as well as a target for streams of bile aimed at her for no apparent reason ('She is too ugly to live', says a character that doesn't even know who she is. This is going too far) Thank goodness, they're both finally dead.

If I hadn't read the last 10 pages of the book, I would have given it two stars, since what I have written above is the impression I'd got by that point.

The last star is taken away by Bond's cliffhangerish amnesia in the end. How more cliche could it be? What's next? A life-threatening pregnancy from a secret lover?

This novel is too ugly to live. 1 star. Don't read it.