What's everyone else think of it?
Edited by DavidJones, 22 January 2010 - 08:46 PM.
Posted 22 January 2010 - 08:46 PM
Edited by DavidJones, 22 January 2010 - 08:46 PM.
Posted 22 January 2010 - 08:55 PM
Posted 22 January 2010 - 10:11 PM
Posted 23 January 2010 - 06:36 AM
Posted 25 January 2010 - 01:31 PM
Posted 25 January 2010 - 06:08 PM
Posted 25 January 2010 - 09:19 PM
That doesnt sound good DavidJones. I had the same problem with LR, but it got better and was actually good. For Special Services is my next one.
Posted 25 January 2010 - 09:26 PM
Posted 26 January 2010 - 03:05 AM
I found it a chore, too. I had it sitting around the house for a lengthy period of time, and finally willed myself to finish it.I couldn't get to the end of it. I had something like sixty pages to go and I just was no longer interested in the story so I gave it up.
Posted 26 January 2010 - 07:12 AM
Posted 16 February 2010 - 11:09 PM
I'm reading this for the first time at the moment and I'm really struggling with it.
What's everyone else think of it?
Posted 17 February 2010 - 03:11 PM
I'm reading this for the first time at the moment and I'm really struggling with it.
What's everyone else think of it?
I hate to speak ill of the dead, but most of the John Gardner Bond novels were needlessly complicated. I liked some of the plot ideas he came up with - SPECTRE reborn, Neo-Nazi villains, a religious fanatic as a bad-guy (Scorpius), and even the idea of Bond foiling an attempted military coup in the US (COLD). But he couldn't leave well enough alone. Double-crosses and triple-crosses were thrown in, it seemed to me just for the sake of it, and most added nothing to the overall storyline. If you have to keep re-tracing the steps of the plot when reading a Bond novel then the fault doesn't lie with you but with whoever wrote it. Ian Fleming's Bond plots were, by contrast, relatively straightforward but well written. He set a pattern that worked. I can't understand why some of his successors worked against it.
Posted 18 February 2010 - 08:19 PM
I'm reading this for the first time at the moment and I'm really struggling with it.
What's everyone else think of it?
I hate to speak ill of the dead, but most of the John Gardner Bond novels were needlessly complicated. I liked some of the plot ideas he came up with - SPECTRE reborn, Neo-Nazi villains, a religious fanatic as a bad-guy (Scorpius), and even the idea of Bond foiling an attempted military coup in the US (COLD). But he couldn't leave well enough alone. Double-crosses and triple-crosses were thrown in, it seemed to me just for the sake of it, and most added nothing to the overall storyline. If you have to keep re-tracing the steps of the plot when reading a Bond novel then the fault doesn't lie with you but with whoever wrote it. Ian Fleming's Bond plots were, by contrast, relatively straightforward but well written. He set a pattern that worked. I can't understand why some of his successors worked against it.
I would agree with 100% of what you say.
I suspect the "why?" is pretty much in the quality of Fleming's writing. Neither Gardner nor Benson felt they could compete with Fleming's prose, which could overshadow a simple storyline, by over-complicating (Gardner) and overlengthening and over-padding (Benson).
I DO think Gardner started off well with Licence Renewed and For Special Services in which he did his best to minimise his natural method for as close to Fleming as he was capable. Pretty much after that his natural preference for the twisting spy story took over and away he went with his double cross and intrigue.
Posted 03 April 2010 - 03:08 AM
Posted 03 April 2010 - 06:23 AM
I'm just finishing up No Deals, Mr. Bond, and am reading all of the novels in order. Yes, I have to admit, the double- and triple-crossing in the Gardner books - beginning with (and, at least so far, worst in) Icebreaker - is beginning to get on my nerves a bit. Still enjoying the books, though, and I think that License Renewed and For Special Services are both at least as good as any Fleming story in the canon.
Posted 03 April 2010 - 11:34 AM
Posted 03 April 2010 - 07:23 PM
I remember reading somewhere that Gardner was not happy with the title (No Deals, Mr Bond), asserting that it was foisted on him by someone at the publishers. For me Gardner's novels went off the boil after Nobody Lives Forever and other than Licence Renewed I can't remember the villain's scheme from any of them (though something about ice cream does come to mind).
I'm surprised at how hard writers have found following Fleming's style - the journalistic attention to detail, somewhat minimalist but linear plotting and speed of writing that gave the stories a flow that kept you interested. This was something that Faulks tried to copy but he didn't do it well enough, I still haven't finished the book...