18 replies to this topic

[RossMan]

For me Gardner's best Bond books are Icebreaker through Nobody Lives Forever plus Win, Loose, or Die, Brokenclaw, and Never Send Flowers.

His worst, Death is Forever and The Man From Barbarossa but I was even able to enjoy Man From Barbarossa somewhat when I first read it. Death is Forever was a poor remake of No Deals, Mr. Bond, a so-so book to begin with.

Then the rest, Licnese Renewed, For Special Services, No Deals, Mr. Bond, Seafire, and the LTK and GE novilizations are just average for me, enjoyable but not very memorable or anything too special. I'm not real sure about For Special Services, however, it wasn't one of my favourites but it was better than average.

I haven't commented on Scorpius and Cold Fall because I still have yet to have read them in their entirety. I started Scorpius and got up to the fourth chapter but was pretty busy at the time so never finished it. And for Cold Fall, I just read the first part, the part taking place in the past.

Overall, I'm pretty satidfied with Gardner's Bond series.

[RossMan]

Seeing a similiar topic for FLeming and Benson, thought I'd do for one Gardner.

1. Icebreaker
2. Brokenclaw (favourite Gardner villain)
3. Nobody Lives Forever
4. Win, Loose, or Die
5. Never Send Flowers
6. Role of Honor
7. For Special Services
8. No Deals, Mr. Bond
9. Licence Renewed
10. Scorpius
11. Seafire
12. Cold Fall (still haven't read pt. 2)
13. The Man From Barbarossa
14. Death is Forever

[White Persian]

I'd add my two cents worth, but even though I've read them all, I find them singularly unmemorable and they've all, bar the first, blurred together.

[RossMan]

I just got around to reading Scorpius and I'd place it as being average. It had a fairly decent villain with an interesting plot. My biggest problem is that by page 130, Bond is still talking to M about the case.

[rafterman]

no best or worst, there's good bits in some and bad, but not one stands out as a favorite, none has been quite right, but pieces are good...

[Jim]

1. Nobody Lives Forever: First Bond book by anyone I ever read. I was nine. Forgive me. Had tried Goldfinger having seen it on TV, but it was booorrrinnnnggg. I was nine. Forgive me. But this, this was vampire bats. Great. Guillotines. Great. A traitor. Great. Long sequences in a hotel room. Er...great.

2. For Special Services. Top twist. Basic plot's got heavy Goldfinger overtones, the drugged ice cream etc. Bit gimmicky with the return of SPECTRE and Leiter's daughter, but suitably nasty bit with the ants on the bed. A traitor. Great. Long sequences in a hotel room. Er...great.

3 and 4. No Deals, Mr Bond and Death is Forever. Largely the same plot. One has a better title. Oh look, there are some real people. The DIF spider sandwich scene is satisfyingly nasty. Even if it is part of a long sequence in a hotel room. Interesting twist in DIF to have Bond completely fail in his mission. Only he comes back alive. OK, so he saves the world. Incidental. A traitor. Erm...hasn't that happened before?

5. Icebreaker. She's a goodie. No, she's a baddie. He's a goodie. No, he's a baddie. At the same time, she's a goodie. And he might be a baddie. But she's probably also a baddie. And he's a baddie as well. Oh no he isn't. Oh yes he is. Chaotic pantomime. Not unenjoyable, but mindscrewing. More than one traitor (or are they....?). Looonnnngggg sequences in hotel rooms.

6. Licence Renewed. For some reason James Bond drives a SAAB. My mother drives a SAAB. Can't remember if there are long sequences in hotel rooms or a traitor in this one, so probably unique and would be top of the lost for that reason if the plot was up to speed. Which it bain't, I'm afraid. Why the hell doesn't Murik just kill Lavender Peacock? And what the hell sort of name is Lavender Peacock anyway? Not bad, but Gardner didn't really get into whatever stride he got into until his next book.

7. Scorpius. Oh, look, real people. Injokery ahoy with Father Valentine. Inexplicable wedding scene. Very nasty sadism in Scorpius' death. No real explanation of quite why the villain is doing what he's doing. Novel to have Bond nothing more than a stupid policeman. Traitor? Long sequence in hotel room? Check, on both accounts.

8. Win, Lose or Die. John's been watching Top Gun again. Not unentertaining, but staggeringly unlikely; no evidence of Bond being a navy pilot before now. Isn't he supposed to be about fifty in these books anyway? Still on the gaspers and the booze? Let's shove him in a quadzillion pound aircraft then. I'm sure there are some villains in there somewhere, but buggered if I can remember what they're up to and why. Title meaningless when you think about it. Real people? Check. Traitor and hotel rooms et cetera? Yep. OK, so it's a bit of a twist on the norm but it's a clear step away from the adventures of Commander James Bond, HMSS, and towards Captain James Boldman / John Bryce, RN, who is a considerably more boring character. Patchy.

9. Role of Honour. Airship hijinkery time. Published 1984. A View to a Kill. Airship hijinkery time. Released 1985. There's something in there about toy soldiers, and role play games. Is this meant to be a satire on Bond? JG's certainly got it in for Oxfordshire; not kind about Banbury here and positively acid about Woodstock in WLoD. Traitor...blah blah blah.

10. Cold. Oh, M gets kidnapped. That's new. Almost completely meaningless if you haven't read Nobody Lives For Ever and Win, Lose or Die. Not much better if you have, frankly. She's dead. No she isn't. Yes she is. No she isn't. Yes she is. Madness. New love of Bond's life dies offstage. V. odd. Usual sub-SPECTRE thing with the villains. Trai....yeah.

11. Never Send Flowers. Immediately dated after 31 August 1997, sadly. Real people again, sadly. John's been watching The Silence of the Lambs again, even more sadly. Could have been a great spoof. Unfortunately not presented in that manner. Bond going wet between the legs about the Disney Corporation? Hmm. Treachery and hotels? Yippee kai yay.

12. The Man from Barbarossa. Utterly bloody mad. Provocative? Provocatively poor. Still don't quite understand what it's meant to be about. Bond is part of a team of foreign agents again, one of whom may not be entirely trustworthy. Again. Traitor. Again. Hotel. Again. Plot for no better reason than the book needs one. Again. Last half of the book little to do with the first half. Again. Bond forgets what his mission was, as do we. Again. General feeling that JG hasn't planned this one. Again. General feeling that JG didn't know how to end it. Again. Different, but still a crashing bore. Apparently JG's favourite, but maybe he feels sorry for it. It receives no such sympathy from me.

13. SeaFire. Odd one, this. Villain is nutso neo-Nazi (again) but that plot is never really developed, in favour of villain creating an ecological incident which will (quite obviously) lead to his rise to power. JG taps into a zeitgeist only he was aware of; the relationship between fascist madmen and oil spillages. Just, well, ends. Comes to a stop rather than a conclusion. Curious artistic decision to seriously injure the girl. Hard to like. Hard to take seriously. Hard to feel that JG isn't coasting with the hotel room scenes (not amongst his "best") and the traitor, who on this occasion is blindingly obvious. Because we're expecting a traitor, see? Two Zeros? Two fingers.

14. Brokenclaw. Interesting villain. But the remainder is inane. John's been watching films again, and this time it's Dances with Wolves. And The Spy who Loved Me. The wolf thing is stupid. The end isn't a climax to the story; it's just at the end of the book. Most of the book seems to be set in a hotel room. Traitor, yeah, yeah. The overwhelming impression created by the book is that the author was bored. Same here. A boring James Bond book. Shame. It had to happen some time, and it happened here. Squanders the villain. Squanders your life to read it.

I actually quite like the Gardner books. I'm just left with the impression that he didn't really like Bond all that much. That may not be true, but it's the impression I'm left with. After Scorpius, the books hold no surprises at all. Pity, because the top five are entertaining. The rest are a bit of an effort, I'm afraid.

[JAWS]

My favorite Gardner books are No Deals, Mr. Bond and Death Is Forever. I don't remember much about the former, but recall that I liked it when I read it.

I've read all of the Gardner books except for The Man from Barbarossa (last half) and Cold Fall (last half). Gardner's best villain was probably Brockenclaw Lee, I suppose. His books just aren't all that memorable to me. They passed the time, though.

[RossMan]

You didn't miss out on too much by not finishing The Man From Barbarossa. It probably could have been good but wasn't. It seems very un-Bond like too, that's the major problem. I'd probably have enjoyed it more had it been an origianl novel about Pete Natkowitz of the Israeli Secret Service.

I've enjoyed all but two of Gardner's books. I think he really deserves more credit than he gets, otherwise Glidrose probably would have gotten rid of him long before he could write sixteen books, even topping Fleming's total.

[JAWS]

Yes, Gardner's books were not too bad. They entertained me during lunch break when I went to high school and I'm glad I read them.
I forgot to mention, I liked the training section in Role of Honor.

[Roebuck]

I think Gardner had a feel for the more macabre aspects of Fleming’s style that Benson doesn’t. Bensons heart is never really in the torture scenes (unlike ‘Icebreaker’).
His run of books has been competitively sanitised and I can’t imagine him ever writing the guillotine bit from NLF or the escape through the poisonous bugs from ‘Scorpius’. In general I always thought Gardner wrote good action sequences

Having said that,by the time he wrote ‘Cold’ I got the impression he’d lost any interest in the character.

[RossMan]

Gardner's books were basically about an older Bond, mid forties perhaps, and it shows, he drinks more coffee than martinis, and smokes less (he even switched to cigarettes not as strong as his others) and the 00 sect. is disband (the "Special Section" as it's called in Licence Renewed) which may be why some people overlook his books, it's not the regular Bond stuff that we all know and love. But that's probably why I do like his books so much, we can see standard, regular Bond stuff in the movies, Benson and even Fleming books, Gardner really played around with Bond and his world which is what makes his series of Bond books more unique, and for me enjoyable. (Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not saying Gardner's are better than Fleming's.) Gardner had a good run but I am glad that he called it quits with Cold Fall as that, and Seafire, are, for me anyways, two of his weaker books and I suspect that had he done a 15th, it would not have been an improvement. (What the heck is with MicroGlobe One!?)

[scaramanga]

My main concern over the Gardner books was his toying around with certain aspects of the Bond canon which should never be touched.
For example, Bond's service has always been the British Secret Intelligence Service, formerly known as MI6. Gardner changed the Double-O-Section into the Special Section in Licence Renewed, Bond/Gardner states that the service has become an anti-terroist unit in The Man From Barbarossa, and Bond becoming head of the Two Zeros section under the guidance of MicroGlobe One.
Bond's gun has always been the Walther PPK 7.65mm since Doctor No, yet Gardner played musical guns with Bond until he was given the ASP 9mm in Role of Honour which became his weapon of choice for the rest of Gardner's books.

[scaramanga]

Another thing that bugs me which I've just remembered is an overindulgence in characters whose name and surname start with the same letter and stupid pet names, e.g. Persephone "Percy" Proud, Cindy Chalmers, Wolfgang "Wolfie" Weisen, Nanette "Nanny" Norrich, Yevgeny Yuskovich, David Dragonpol, the list goes on.

[Jim]

scaramanga (30 Jan, 2002 03:23 p.m.):
Another thing that bugs me which I've just remembered is an overindulgence in characters whose name and surname start with the same letter and stupid pet names, e.g. Persephone "Percy" Proud, Cindy Chalmers, Wolfgang "Wolfie" Weisen, Nanette "Nanny" Norrich, Yevgeny Yuskovich, David Dragonpol, the list goes on.

...and on to Harriet Horner and Bassam Baradj and I'm sure there are some more kicking about here and there.

Fleming for the literate?
Benson for the illiterate?
Gardner for the alliterate?

A bit cruel on Mr B., and fans of Mr B (it's a joke, chums. Don't shoot me) but worth it for the magnificence of that joke, if I say so meself.

Which me does.

Although JG can't be blamed for Miles Messervy, Tiger Tanaka, Sigismund Stromberg (see book) and Serrafimo (sp? illiterate ol' Jim) Spang, I suppose.

Gustav Graves is a very "Gardner" name.

[scaramanga]

Also, Win, Lose or Die was quite a good read with a refreshing plot. I love the opening chapter with the hang-glider attack on the Japanese tanker.

[scaramanga]

For me, No Deal, Mr Bond is his best book. All it lacks is a slightly stronger villain, General Chernov was quite nasty, but he lacked a bit of depth to his character I thought.

[RossMan]

scaramanga (10 Nov, 2001 01:23 a.m.):
General Chernov was quite nasty, but he lacked a bit of depth to his character I thought.

Had Fleming created the character of Chernov, I'm sure he'd have given him more of a backstory to make him more interesting.

[scaramanga]

RossMan (20 Nov, 2001 10:51 p.m.):
I just got around to reading Scorpius and I'd place it as being average. It had a fairly decent villain with an interesting plot. My biggest problem is that by page 130, Bond is still talking to M about the case.

I found the first half of the story to be like a detective story. Engaging, but not boring.
I never quite understood why Scorpius/Valentine married Bond and Harriet Horner. I know that Harriet and Scorpius are related somehow but I never quite understood why he wanted Bond to marry her. And come to think about it, why Bond went through with it in the first place.

[General Koskov]

Read them all except for COLD, Death is F0rever, and SeaFire, so here