Customer Reviews

COLONEL SUN ( A James Bond Adventure )

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Forget Raymond Benson. Don't even waste your time with John Gardner. They're hack writers who learned all about Bond from the movies. Markham (aka Kingsley Amis) knew enough about Fleming's vision of Bond to write "The James Bond Dossier", one of the first critiques of Fleming's series. "Colonel Sun" picks up right where Ian's final novel, "The Man With The Golden Gun" left off, and brings 007's career to a fitting close. The writing style is eerily like Fleming's, even containing dashes of the famed "Fleming Effect". Read this one, put in on the shelf next to your original 007 books, and forget about wasting your time with any other authors who attempt to write Bond.

Colonel Sun is a sadist. So was Kingsley Amis, as the miniscule details of pain and torture are given as much relish as Fleming did about the class trappings that we enjoy. It's also clear that the style was more "modern" than Fleming, but it still remains true to the character that he built, more so than what's been coming about lately.

Even without the minor details, it's still a great Bond book; compelling throughout.

"Colonel Sun" is far and away the best Bond novel written by a Fleming successor (a distant second would be Christopher Wood's surprisingly tense novelization of his "Spy Who Loved Me" script).

Kingsley Amis, who proved his knowledge of Fleming's writing in "The James Bond Dossier," creates a novel that's actually better than a few Flemings titles. The plot is engrossing, the villain is superb and after you read the torture sequence you'll never look at a screwdriver the same way again. Pure Bond greatness that deserves a wider readership. I hope Penguin adds it to its marvelous trade paperbacks, but I doubt it will happen.

One of the things I like about the reader reviews in Amazon.com is it gives me the opportunity to learn about books that I never knew existed. Colonel Sun is a perfect example. Up until a few months ago, I was completely unaware that someone other than John Gardener and Raymond Benson had authored a novel featuring James Bond.

Fans of 007 adventures and escapades should do what I did. Go to the local library and see if this jewel is still on the shelf. You'll be glad you did.

5 stars to Mr. Amis \ Markham who does an excellent job writing in the style that made Ian Fleming a household name.

After being disgusted with John Gardner and Raymond Benson's Bond adventures, I had been wanting to read this first successor to Fleming for some time, especially after hearing all the glowing reviews about him being "the most like Fleming." I finally had the opportunity and must say this book did not come close to those raised expectations.

Fleming had a certain flair that his successors have been unable to duplicate. He always seemed to have the right instinct for drawing the reader into the story. He rarely left one bored or wanting to hurry through a scene. But perhaps his greatest asset was his ability to suspend the reader's disbelief. Even though Fleming's Bond would not find himself doing some of the silly stunts that the cartoonish, cinematic Bond might pull off without a sweat, Fleming's Bond did get himself out of some very unlikely, tight spots and yet, Fleming was able to pull it off. Fleming accomplished this by fulling fleshing out Bond into a three-dimensional character, by first and foremost never letting the reader forget that this was a human being: a human being who was tough and capable, but who still had mental, emotional, and physical limitations.

Unfortunately, Kingsley Amis' (Markham's) Bond, like his successors, Gardner and Benson, falls far short of that Fleming standard.

Amis' Bond is not nearly as solid. We are never privy to the thoughts in Bond's mind to the extent we are in Fleming's novels. While there are moments when Bond is not in control, there are far too many where he is perfectly in command of the situation. That includes one preposterous moment when, halfway through the book, Bond spells out the plot of the evil mastermind by putting two and two together long before two and two are even presented to him. This not only killed the mystery element but is completely contrary to Fleming's Bond, who, more often than not, was in the dark with regard to the machinations of his enemies, simply allowing himself to be carried along (with the reader) on the flow of increasingly tense and dangerous events. In "Colonel Sun," Bond's revelation comes off as a cheap plot device that mimics the cheapnes of Bond films, where plot devices only exist to make excuses for the places, the characters, and above all, the action sequences that are pasted into the story.

It's that sort of writing that demonstrates Amis was incapable of duplicating Fleming's storytelling rhythm...a fast-moving rhythm established between moments of drama, suspense and tension interspersed with those insights into Bond's character.

The best illustration of this is a comparison between scenes from "Colonel Sun" and Fleming's "Dr. No," where in both novels, Bond tries to fool the opposition that is tracking his whereabouts into following somebody else. In both cases, those who are misleading the opposition end up killed. In "Dr. No," Fleming effectively handled this information in a few sentences, with Bond finding out after the fact. In "Colonel Sun," as Bond tools around the Aegean Sea, he switches boats in order to fool the enemy. Amis devotes a whole chapter to the newly introduced character now captaining Bond's decoy boat, including that character's hopes and dreams! This character not only ends up getting killed at the end of the chapter, but so does what is left of the story's momentum by this time.

Although Amis makes some concessions to details from the Fleming novels, he has also taken some liberties with characters previously established by Fleming that Fleming most certainly would never have approved of. This is most notable with the previously impregnable and respectable M, who is reduced to a drugged-up, jellyfish-like kidnap victim and comes off as someone who looks up to Bond as opposed to vice-vera.

Worst of all, however, are the liberties taken with Bond, particularly with his love interest in the book. Ignoring the fact that this girl "Ariadne," at 23, is less than half of Bond's age (based upon timelines previously established by Fleming), this obnoxious brat is a Communist agent working for the Russian G.R.U. And yet Bond just "chuckles" over her idealism (page 111 of first edition). Compare to the ending of "Casino Royale" and Bond's reaction when he discovered the woman he was falling for turned out to be a Russian double agent, and one can immediately know that Amis' Bond is a complete stranger to Fleming's. Can you imagine Fleming writing that Bond had more longing for a character like this "Ariadne" - after just meeting her in a bar a day or two ago, by the way - "than he could remember feeling toward any woman?" (Page 142). It also doesn't help that there is an explicitness in Amis' novel that we don't find in the novels of Fleming.

Finally, the title character has none of the panache that Fleming injected into the colorful yet somehow compelling villains from his novels. Colonel Sun comes off as a boring smalltime crook who Amis tries to depict as coldly ruthless but completely undermines by the descriptions of Sun's manner, and especially by turning him into a conscience-stricken bleeding heart near the book's ending.

The bottom line is don't buy any of the gushing reviews that positively compare Kingsley Amis' sole Bond adventure to the Fleming style. I have read all of Fleming's Bond books several times. I have also read the other successors to the Bond legacy. Unfortunately, all are still haunted by the ghost of Fleming in the sense that comparisons are inevitable and if you are very familiar with Fleming's Bond, you are bound to be disappointed. If you still have any doubts, consider that there is a good reason why Ian Fleming is a household name and his successors are not.

ONE HELL OF A READ, LIKE MANY OTHERS I DISCOVERED THIS BOOK AFTER STARTING GARDNERS CYCLE AND IT WAS AS IF AN OLD FRIEND HAD REAPPEARED. SUPERIOR PLOT STYLE, CHARACTERS. FIND IT AT ALL COSTS!

I heartily agree with other reviewers about the other writers. Gardner's attempts at Bond stories are uninspired at best, boring at worst. Benson's are downright pathetic -- unbelievably bad. But Amis' effort was, if not perfect, worthy of the standard Fleming set.

This is a good one. I haven't read the others by him (Lucky Jim etc.), but I think I may have to after this one. Excellent book, go find it (if you can).

A brilliant and hugely entertaining Bond adventure by Kingsley Amis (using pseudonymn of R. Markham). Read it to see how in 1968, Amis predicted the collusion between Russia and the West and the advent of China as a new global threat. Unforgettable.

Without a doubt, this Bond book is as good as any written by Ian Fleming himself. At the moment you'll have to search the used book stores to find a copy, but it is well worth the extra effort. It is, however, absolutely criminal that this wonderful novel remains out of print while Raymond Benson's laughable parodies of the Bond character are widely available.