Customer Reviews

The World Is Not Enough

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I approached this novelization of a Bond film from a "literary" standpoint: I haven't yet seen the new film "The World Is Not Enough", so I read the novel as a novel, without any visual references--memories--of the film. Unfortunately, the non-novelist Raymond Benson offers us another bland effort. This alleged novel self-destructs in many ways. Foremost is the novel's lack of suspense: the narrative stays on one level; and Benson's description of action scenes are awkward. (He still can't describe a series of quick moments and therefore resorts to boring explanations: "It all happened in six seconds" (11), he tells us in the fight scene in Lachaise's office.)

Added to this mess is Benson's tone of voice. We sense, as we do in his previous 007 efforts, that he's nervous about writing a Bond novel. As a result, he lacks the confident, booming authorial voice of a seasoned novelist. Oh, he does try to convince us that he knows what he's doing: he struggles to add background material to some characters, but he pours the information all at once. Take, for instance, the villain Renard: the background of the character appears late in the novel, taking up almost an entire chapter and, consequently, disrupts the main narrative. To make matters worse, we learn nothing new about our man Bond. He's so bland that he is nothing more than nine letters on a page that comprise the name "James Bond."

And let us not forget the laughable travelogue narrative. Benson's description of cities and places is more suitable for an elementary school geography book, not a spy thriller. Indeed, his description of the Bosphorous is geared for six-year-olds: "The Bosphorous has always been a strategic focal point in the magnificent city of Istanbul, the link between the two continents. The western shore lies in Europe, while the eastern one is in Asia" (167). Geez, how fortunate we are to have Benson remind us that Europe is the West and Asia is the East!

But perhaps the narrative reaches its lowest point during the love scenes. Whereas Ian Fleming, Kingsly Amis, and John Gardner present romantic scenes that were, yes, risque but with touches of mystic, Benson takes the extra step to become blatantly risque. The love scene of Bond and Electra is low-class junk...

To which we say: Pass the Tylenol.

All in all, this novel is a waste of brain cells. It's best to just watch the movie. Ah, better still, my fellow Bond fans, let us return to Ian Fleming's orignal novels for good James Bond stories.

Based on the new James Bond film, Raymond Benson takes up on Bond once again. This time, the story really stays pretty straight with the movie, only providing a bit more than the film. It contains some background information of Elektra/Renard, and what happens in the past, etc., but it isn't too much. Unlike Tomorrow Never Dies:A Novel, TWINE is not adding much to the film. Basically, if you saw the film and you are a little wishy-washy on reading a Bond book or having to read the what you saw on film, you probably don't need to buy this. However, if you're an avid Bond fan or would still want to take up on a Bond book, it's still a good read. If you see the movie first, it becomes easier to imagine the scenes. Raymond Benson has written better Bond novels than this, however, so make your choice more warily.

I am on record as trashing High Time to Kill (see reviews for that book) along with vowing to wait for the Benson novels in paperback (if not used papaerback). Well, I bought this paperback new and would have paid for a hard cover of this story's quality. Benson is terrific on this novelization. I'm sure there is a lot of extra info that will clarify parts of the movie when I see it. The rumored "airhead" personality of Christmas Jones does not come through in the book and I was afraid that the return to "sexpot" Bond girls would send the modernized Bond into a tailspin. One especially bright point is the meatier role for M. I think Benson likes writing her and it shows. For fans who haven't followed every plot point posted on the web, I'm sure there will be more than a few surprises. The plot-Bond is assigned to bodyguard Elektra King, the daughter of a recently-assassinated oil magnate. Elektra has already been the target of kidnappers led by the villainous Renard, a terrorist who has no pain center. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a "painless" killer was written into the Tomorrow Never Dies plot, but was scrapped after the novelizatioon had already been written) Great gadgets, great plot, great girls,a surprise development with M, and an atomic bomb stolen from a foremer Soviet Republic make for an exciting and riveting thriller.

First of all, let us be clear on what this is: it is merely a prose adaption to the Purvis and Wade screenplay. However, this does not excuse Mr. Benson's bland, cliche-riddled style, nor does it excuse the utter lack of energy which permeates the work about a third of the way through.

Mr. Benson has written three previous Bond novels of his own design: ZERO MINUS TEN, THE FACTS OF DEATH, HIGH TIME TO KILL. And, while none of them tops Fleming at his best (FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE) or Deighton at his worst (CATCH A FALLING SPY, THE BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN), they nonetheless manage to be breezy, entertaining espionage fantasies, as much fun as nineties pulp fiction can be. Unfortunately, when he writes novelizations, Mr. Benson seems to lose that sense of fun. Action pieces that should be energetic and high powered become flat and labored, romance becomes silly, and locations lose their exotic flavor.

The only time the TWINE novelization comes to life is in the opening sequence, in which Bond escapes from a sniper attack in Bilbao and chases a female bomber along the Thames. The setup, too, is intriguing, especially the briefing that occurs in Thane Castle (complete with holographic displays).

From there, the book quickly runs out of gas. The imagination that went into the first act suddenly disappears, turning the entire effort into a Defuse the Bomb scenario.

The Q scene is ludicrous. The locations are threadbare and lack the gloss of previous outings. The villain's plot to irradiate the oil fields of the Caspian Sea meets with little more than a shrug. (Does it really matter who's controlling the world's oil supply?) And the less said of Dr. Christmas Jones, the better.

I can only partly blame Mr. Benson. True, his handling of the action is flat, but he does succeed in breathing life into the characters, rounding the villains into beings less two-dimensional. The rest of the blame must fall on Purvis and Wade, who allow the entire thing to become routine at the end of the first act.

With any luck, it will play better on the screen.

Most movie novelizations seem like they are written for children or for die-hard fans of the film only. And this entry is no exception. Raymond Benson is a lousy writer of the regular Bond novels, and his novelizations are far worse since to begin with, they are novelizations. It's a shame really, because Christopher Wood and John Gardner actually rose above the standard movie tie-in book with their own novelizations of earlier Bonds. But Benson is an out and out hack. (Somewhere in Tomorrow Never Dies he actually writes a sentence like, "The car was completely destroyed.") I would recommend this book only to die-hard Bond fans that buy all of the books. Otherwise keep away from and from any book by Raymond Benson. He is destroying the Bond literary franchise with inferior product. His writing is FAR worse than anything John Gardner ever penned.

Okay 007 fans, this book was a waste of time. It was so bad, that I couldn't finish it. The boat chase at the start of the book did not translate will, nor did the mountain chase. The characters seemed flat and our beloved Bond was dull. Granted, this is just my opinion, but this is one book that can be skipped. See the movie. Mind you, I love Bond books, but this was one that can be passed on.

I read the novelization of "Tomorrow Never Dies" before reading this. The thing I noticed with Benson is that in his novelizations he writes in third-person omniscent, allowing the reader to not only visualize everything, but know what the characters are thinking, which can obviously not be done in the movies. I had some of the movie before reading the book. After I read the book, however, I saw the movie and it made a lot more sense.

Being a Bond fan since I was a kid, I naturally can find little fault with Mr. Benson's novelisation of the screenplay. At least he attempts to flesh out the characters more than John Gardner ever did. Ian Fleming always made that extra effort in presenting the villain as a real person with a proper background, and Mr. Benson has retained that tradition. Though he has copied the dialogue faithfully from the screenplay, I can't help wondering how more excellent this book would have been had he created the situations and characters from scratch.

Yet another watered-down Bond novel based upon a movie script that has little to do with Ian Fleming's original character.

Without a doubt, the champaign corks must have immediately started popping in the halls of the Library of Congress once the release of this book was announced.

Raymond Benson's second novel based on a screenplay is not entirely disappointing. It perhaps lacks the detail and depth of character evident in his "Tomorrow Never Dies" that was a top-notch adaptation of the screenplay. And that is what the cinematic THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH truly needed. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH atypically required a book to make sense of the confusing plot mixing the King family with Swiss Bankers, terrorists and British intelligence. In retrospect there are many intriguing elements of the film that somehow go undeveloped. The film's structure is more character based than driven by plot. Unfortunately, there was a great opportunity to delve deeper into the psyche of the central characters, but that opportunity went by the wayside. On a more practical note, it seemed rather incongruous to have M go out into the "field" and end up a captive behind bars in a seaside estate. This is completely out of character for the resourceful and worldly M characterized in TOMORROW NEVER DIES. The problem here is actually with the cinematic version of THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH and not Raymond Benson's novel.