I'm not a Bond fan and the only other i've read is Casino Royale. This is better and would have been 4 stars but the buildup is, as is often the case, better than the pay off.

In Casino Royale Bond is shown (unintentionally i'm assuming) to be an incompetent, traitorous, rapist, in this he's a bit more competent although he still manages to ignore a lot of suspicious things.
Bond doesn't think about raping anyone this time but don't worry he has a new BFF who is a confirmed rapist so thats just super.... :| . I'm seriously wondering if any police force has looked into Flemings personal life.

Anyway, due to my aversion to bond i was quite pleased he doesn't make his apperance here until about half-way through. The writing is good and very detailed which, while very occasionally annoying overall adds a lot to the flavour.

As i said things go a little poorer towards the climax especially since we get a lot of time building up a villian who doesn't do much in the end.
I think there's also an error, a lot of effort is put into trying to cover up some gunshots but there was already a gunshot before that which wasn't covered up at all and people should have heard. Maybe i missed something.

Overall, well written... very alive thanks to its detailed nature and some nice twists but not quite 4 stars for me due to exposition dumping.

It's not a matter of much argument that the James Bond franchise has built itself on casual sexism (selling the idea of well-bred hypermasculinity alongside a very dated idea of femininity as passive and strictly sexual), but the plot of From Russia With Love in particular is premised on the idea that women are prone to doing shockingly stupid things, especially in matters of 'love'. Why else would a Soviet conspiracy to defame a top dog British secret agent; and to thereby bring scandalous shame to the West in general; be built on the idea of a naïve Russian cyper clerk falling in love with a file photograph of Bond? In fact, when M. and Bond become aware of this woman and her proposal (to deliver to them the immensely valuable Soviet tech of the Spektor in return for being allowed to go with Bond to England), they almost dismiss the idea of it being a trap based on how likely such a silly womanly 'crush' could be.

Anyway. SMERSH, the Soviet counterintelligence agency headed by the toad-like Rosa Klebb (who reminds me of JK Rowling's Umbridge to no end), decides to bait Bond — decidedly the 'best' British spy — with the cypher clerk (Corporal) Tatiana Romanova's feminine charms and the militarily-important offer of the Spektor; to cause a scandal about the British Secret Services that would pull attention away from the Soviet's own recent blunderous infamy. And since this novel is written in the freshly post-colonial Cold War context where sensibilities were yet to be developed at all, the plot involves Istanbul, whose Oriental curiosities are employed to the maximum in the book in order to entertain western readers.

In Istanbul, Turkey; Bond meets Kerim Bey, who works with the British services and is quite a big man in his own country. Kerim becomes 007's friend, aide, and his window to all forms of Oriental debauchery: think, for example, a business empire run by a hoard of sons; borne of intercourse with many a woman chained, no less; or a fight-to-death between two gypsy women (over a man they both 'love'!) where clothes are torn off and bodies displayed. Bond, of course, is a proponent of benevolent sexism, for he stops the women from getting killed and also refuses to have sex with them. In fact, even with Tatiana, he only talks of spanking in the event she spoke against him or got too fat!

Tatiana, as per SMERSH's orders (and some strange, 'womanly' ailment) falls in love with Bond and seduces him in a hotel's honeymoon suite where; unbeknownst to either of the people in bed; Soviet agents are filming them for defamatory purposes. The couple then takes off with the Spektor in a train (the Oriental Express!) where they make love, and where a lot of action happens and Kerim is killed (because despite being admirable, he is half a Turk!). When Bond feels he is in trouble and calls for backup, he is met with Captain Nash: ostensibly sent by M, but; as we later find out; really the soviet-employed, sexless, hysterical hitman called Donovan Grant (or Red Granitsky, after his defection from Britain to USSR) who only kills around the full moon (fun!).

Grant and Bond battle it out while Tatiana; the passive Bond girl; is passed out cold because of the spikes drink administered to her by Nash. Here, Bond is explained in a veritable monologue by the villain (WHY do they do that?) the Soviet conspiracy, and how the Spektor is also a bait fitted with a bomb. But of course, Bond kills Grant and escapes to take the latter's place in a meeting with Rosa Klebb at the Ritz. The end-all of it is that they fight and Klebb dies, but not before Bond, too, is injected with a deadly poison that should kill him in a matter of seconds.

Way after the book ends, it leaves one with a lot to talk about.

The idea of gender and sexuality, for instance. It's undeniable that Fleming was a product of his time, but From Russia With Love paints for us a nice little picture of the ideals of sexuality in that time: all men must be like Bond: hypermasculine and a womaniser; while all women must not be like Tatiana (willing to sell their bodies to the state), except in the matter of giving their bodies to the perfect man. There is also something decidedly Shakespearean about how neither the woman nor Bond know the full extent of the plots that employ them. That deviant sexuality was seen as evil in this time is also illustrated well enough through the scene with Rosa Klebb, dressed in an orange silk negligee, trying to exploit an unassuming, 'guileless' Corporal Tatiana.

This book — and I assume it is so with all other Bond novels, too — holds true our notion of the Cold-war era fascinating with armament, as it devotes longish sections to fascinating military and spy technology: the most unforgettable example has to be the 'suitcase' created for Bond by the Q Branch. In fact, the bait that interests M (and even Bond, although he is also roped in by the woman aspect of it) revolves around the Spektor, a Soviet cryptographic device (i.e. military tech!). This Cold War hunger is rather disgusting to me from the distance of the many decades that it has been since then.

All that being said, From Russia With Love is a fairly good spy thriller (especially when one keeps in mind how the genre mandates sexism and sentiments of war-mongering paraded as the thrill of saving national pride). From literary aspects, too, the novel is unique: The first third of it is from the perspective of the Soviet conspirators, and we only meet Bond — bored from the lack of a mission and abandoned by his previous woman — halfway through the book. Too bad that it's just so misogynistic that every woman character has to either be evil or a pawn for male use.
However, the book is still wonderful compared to the movie (which is one of the better James Bond movies at that). While it is well-made, the cinematic plane just exaggerates everything unlikeable (misogynistic) about Bond. The additional plot of Klebb working for the private intelligence organisation S.P.E.C.T.R.E. instead of the Russians was quite charming, too, in that it made the James Bond universe slightly apolitical (perhaps a good thing in it's contemporary tension-ridden global context?)

From Russia With Love is a good novel (and movie) when one weighs it strictly as part of the inherently problematic James Bond universe. Assessed independent of that, it is just a gimmicky, dated mess that could only be read for critical purposes and the like.

4 Stars. You've seen the movie. Now read the novel. Probably the best of the original series of novels and short stories by Ian Fleming. These early thrillers are much less complicated than today's. The movies too. They're shorter for one thing. I yearn. You can't help but see Sean Connery as "Bond, James Bond" in the book. But it is hard to see how anyone who is not a fan of the early Bond movies could come back for a second look at one of the author's cold-war chases. They are dated, yet they are classics, the books and the movies. Ian Fleming popularized a new type of adventure thriller with beautiful locations, beautiful women and some dangerous ones too, implacable enemies invariably much bigger than life, international criminal organizations, and an indestructible hero. In "Russia," our man with a licence to kill, 007, is off to Istanbul to meet the beautiful Tatiana and acquire a Soviet cryptograph machine. We meet Ali Kerim Bey and Rosa Klebb and her lethal shoes, ride the Orient Express, and finish it off with a lovely time in Venice. I smile. (May 2017)

Having avoided Fleming's work all my life, the recent fuss about Daniel Craig stepping down as James Bond piqued my interest, and I decided to check out one of the source novels for the first time. From Russia with Love is often touted as the best of the Bond books, and its big screen adaptation brought back childhood memories of gloomy sunday afternoons spent in front of the TV, watching Sean Connery keep the British end up for Queen and Country. Though one movie seemed to blend into another, the overriding message was clear even to my young mind: Britain was number 1, and Bond was the epitome of cool Britannia, the quintessential English gentleman. Fleming wrote him as an Englishman, and his manner of speaking is very much of the upper classes, to whch Fleming belonged. This was written at a time before British and English were ever treated as anything but synonyms and when the smaller nations had to simply be quiet and accept their place. Imperial nostalgia required that the Empire be treated as if it was still being run from London, and the English were in charge.The fact that Connery, still the most memorable Bond, was quite adamantly Scottish and not at all in keeping with Fleming's physical description didnt seem to matter at all. He was, and is, in many peoples eyes still the face and voice most associated with 007, even down to the sibilant lisp (Yesh Mish Moneypenny, etc etc.) In fact, of all the screen Bonds, only Daniel Craig and Roger Moore were unequivocally English, the others being variously Scottish, Welsh, Irish and even Australian (the hapless George Lazenby). Even our national heroes werent quite as 'national' as we had assumed. With that in mind, and reservations temporarily on hold, I held my nose and turned the first page.

First, lets get the negatives out the way: The characterisation of every other character except Bond is terrible. The Soviet Aparatchiks may as well have been cut from a mold labelled 'Commie Cliche 101'. SMERSH, the fictional counter-intelligence organisation which plots to kill 007 is headed by a man named Comrade Grubozaboyshikov, a ludicrous name intended to signal oriental cunning and Stalinist cruelty, and the other villains such as Rosa Klebb the torturess, are so cartoonishly evil that you soon realise that the movies hardly had to simplify or adapt the source material at all. There is simply no depth here. To describe them as two dimensional would be an exaggeration. Also, running through the whole piece like a stick of rock is the undercurrent of casual misogyny that the series is notorious for. Women are treated either as sex objects/toys or as haggard old witches and crones. No other role is permitted. Barely is a female character introduced before she is disrobing to sleep with our dashing hero, or being summarily executed by him. Or both. The obligatory Femme Fatale, Tatiana Romanovna (Fleming's name choice here perhaps reveals his royal nostalgia) is tasked with seducing Commander Bond in order to murder him, but, who could have guessed?! She begins to develop feelings for the tuxedo-wearing secret agent, and finds herself torn between the ideology she believes in, and the man she loves.

Finally, the dialogue is truly diabolical. The plot points are signposted for anyone in the audience who didnt get it the first 5 times, the exposition is so blatant and characters speak in a way that is transparently an excuse for Fleming to put his own prejudices into their mouths. Thus we get the Soviets lambasting the dumb Yanks and the smarmy French, while admitting grudging respect and admiration for Britain and its Security services (of whom Fleming had once been a part.) Is this Cold War fantasy? Or Fleming's dream of a world where Britain still matters as much as it once had? It's been well said before that Bond himself was probably Britain's biggest contribution to the Cold War, and Fleming's creation of these dastardly Soviet villains undoubtedly did much to shape Western views of the USSR. Indeed, this book was said to have been one of President Kennedy's favourites, which might go some way to explaining his own belligerence over Cuba in 1962, when he almost led the world to nuclear war and only the calmness of Nikita Khruschev prevented a world-ending fire.

However, with all those caveats, there is much more to be said in the books favour than I had expected. The pacing is taut and nicely staged, each chapter begins and ends with a cliffhanger and the whole thing is a thriller, and it moves so fast that you barely notice the silliness of much of what is happening. Bond himself, who does not appear until the book's second act, is one of the great spy characters of modern literature, and most of the usual cliches (the martini, the gadgets, the cars, the exotic locales) are trotted out here to good effect. However he's also presented as a darker and more brooding presence than the movies normally allow him, certainly closer in spirit to the Daniel Craig version than Connery, let alone Roger Moore's Carry-on routine. The ending is also much more open-ended than you would expect if you'd only seen the Movies, which was refreshing. Though many of the tropes and cliches are so timeworn now as to be formulaic, the whole thing feels like going to see a fading band playing a greatest hits tour. You know exactly which songs they're going to play, but you still cant help singing along. According to legend Fleming would flee the grim British winter every year to spend a few months holed up in Jamaica at his villa (named, inevitably, Goldeneye) writing these novels, and reading them also feels like a well-earned break from regular reading. One can almost picture the author, sombrero resting on the table in the sunshine, laying down his cigar and cocktail, taking a quick look out at the azure Caribbean as he sits down in front of his typewriter to produce another dashing tale of Commander Bond foiling the wily Russians and saving the world yet again. He clearly enjoyed writing these novels and on the evidence of this one at least, they're just as enjoyable to read. It may be Kitsch and Camp and thinly disguised jingoist propganda, but at least it's honest about it, and at least it entertains as it propagandises.