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I appreciate your note, and yes, certainly. I should have shared more of my thoughts and observation. What I meant was the ending of A, N! which was somewhat surreal and psychedelic - apologies if I'm technically incorrect, but it was spacey and weird - with The End by the Doors playing, and where the assassin sent to kill Colonel Kurtz infiltrates, rises up through the water all painted up, stalks Kurtz and kills him with a blade, intercut with scenes of a large animal being slaughtered by blade. It was dark, moody, atmospheric, in Asia, btw. So I was musing on the possibility that Coppola might have found the YOLT ending somewhat inspirational as to style, because content already came from Conrad. For that matter, I wonder now whether Heart of Darkness came to mind for Fleming in writing the Bond-hunts-and-kills-Blofeld at the lair with the Garden of Death and the volcano. I though Bond being held by Blofeld on the volcano "throne" might represent a large differentiator, but then I remembered Kurtz had placed his killer in a cage, in A, N! Sometimes people don't explicitly acknowledge or even realize when something affects their depiction of something in their art, whether their art be writing, painting, film-making or others. At any rate, as you can see from my more detailed, albeit wandering notes above, I saw some common threads. Granted, after a while one can spot similarities even if they were not placed there based as one perceives, and "there is nothing new under the sun", right ? But I found it an interesting thing upon which to muse...
Your comment that the villain in DN the novel was offed by b-i-r-d-s is just batty !
I’m updating my ranking of all the Fleming books I’ve read so far, not just because of DAF, but because, the more I thought about it, DN was just insanely good, nearly as much as FRWL. So I’m sliding it into third.
1. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
2. From Russia With Love
3. Dr. No
4. You Only Live Twice
5. Moonraker
6. Casino Royale
7. Thunderball
8. Diamonds Are Forever
Not sure what I’ll read next. We’ll see.
What I do find impressive is that it doesn’t feel like it’s written by an American at all: all of the Britishisms and cultural references are right - where someone like Benson was far less convincing. I guess he did his research, and perhaps there’s a good editor involved too.
So this month's was From Russia with Love which I devoured in a couple days so now I'm six chapters into Hurricane Gold which I'm much more lukewarm on. I was when I first read it, so I had hoped I was misremembering but despite starting without any sort of preamble and having a literal hurricane it isn't that engaging.
Yeah I thought the updating of his background and the whole ODG thing was really nicely thought-out. I like that M is the head of this particular branch rather than head of the whole secret service- you'd think the head of the service wouldn't really be briefing agents himself.
I was less keen on Bond having an E-Type though :D
I got to the bit about what his colleague wore on her motorbike and went "well, no, she'd wear textiles if she wanted to be warm."
I loved the absolute hell out of Moonraker, but I just found the top 4 to be even better page turners, whether it's the love story and thrilling escape in OHMSS, the can't-put-it-down drama on the train in FRWL, the tense, taut adventure of DN or the dream-like, strange nature of YOLT. Also, one reason I don't rank MR above any of these could be because I only heard the audiobook (which was great) as opposed to reading it page by page like I did the others. This ranking could change in future when I reread these a second time. So far, I've only read CR more than once.
I love how the inter-war period is used to flesh out these characters. Precious being so unlikeable at the start makes it hard to get into but the fact she has that growth makes her the best of the Young Bond girls so far. And once you get past the opening the ending in the maze run it's as tense and gripping as anything. It'll be interesting to compare with Dr No which from what I've heard has a similar conceit.
But yeah, it's good, it's as well-written as the other three and it's certainly much more gruesome than Fleming. The Mexican setting isn't entirely my cup of tea though, El Huracán is a good but not great Bond villain and James passing as Mexican feels at least a little bit problematic in its own right.
Seeing as I didn't do it in my last post here's my own ranking of all the Bond novels I've read thus far:
Moonraker
Double or Die
SilverFin
From Russia with Love
Casino Royale
Blood Fever
Hurricane Gold
Forever and a Day
Live and Let Die
Diamonds are Forever
And just the Fleming ones:
Moonraker
From Russia with Love
Casino Royale
Live and Let Die
Diamonds are Forever
And Bond in a hurricane is a nice new idea.
@mtm, yes it is - I also loved the Dr No style obstacle course,
I'm the same with WE Johns's The Boy Biggles - just not necessary! But agree Higson writes well and is obviously a fan.
I saw him talk about Bond once and he suggested that Sebastian Faulks, who'd just brought out Devil May Care, hadn't used his opportunity to the fullest and if he, Higson, had got to write adult Bond he'd have put a lot more 'nasty violence and freaky sex'.
Picked up another of these on holiday and I'll certainly read it. I'm not sure I'll like his boarding-school adventures as much as his overseas trip but we'll see!
I have them (Fleming) as ebooks.
You can download them on Fadedpage.
The novels were my route into Bond too. I've always favoured Dalton because he looks like the Bond in my head!
I will be reading the Bond novels and put here my review of each.
I never took to the Gardner novels, and hated 'Devil May Care' and 'Trigger Mortis', which led me to believe no one could do it like Fleming, but now I wish Amis had done more!
Thanks @Birdleson, I do have the Wood version of 'The Spy Who Loved Me!', might give that a whirl first before I launch back into the Fleming books!
I thought of Fawcett as that one played by Rowan Atkinson in Never Say Never Again (I've only saw the introduction of the film) was he and the character in the book are the same?
Anyway it's 128 pages, I will continue reading it later, maybe afternoon?, I have already read 10 pages out of 128.
I'm excited for this!