Customer Reviews

Young Bond Series, The: Silverfin - Book One: A James Bond Adventure

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In the 1930s in the Scottish Highlands, fourteen year old Alphie Kelly sneaks under a fence that contain dead animals and other keep out trespassing notices to go fishing at Loch Silverfin. However, strange behaving eel attack the lad.

At the same time that Alphie vanishes, James Bond enters Eton after spending the last couple of years living with his Aunt Charmian following the deaths of his parents in a mountain climbing incident. He runs into trouble from the start with an older student, American George Hellebore and the teen's father weapons tycoon Randolph.

James heads to Keithly, Scotland to spend the Easter holidays with his beloved aunt and his ailing Uncle Max. On the train, he befriends Red Kelly who is heading to the same area to search for his missing cousin. In Keithly, James and Red breech the perimeter fence, trespassing on Randolph's property where he is conducting experiments on a super soldier that will eliminate the frailty of those he observed during the last Great War.

SILVERFIN is a fine young James Bond tale in which the lad shows glimpses of the cool spy, but just as often displays young teen bravado to hide a lack of confidence. Thus the middle school audience that this novel targets can believe that this is indeed James during his school years. The investigation is intriguing and Randolph is a solid Bond villain. The Eton chapters set the tone for James and his allies vs. the father and son Hellebores. Fans will enjoy their altercation that makes up Part Two of the fine novel.

Harriet Klausner

Upon opening SilverFin and skimming a bit through the first pages, it looked like this might be nothing more than a Harry Potter clone novel. But I am a Bond fanatic at times and like to try all aspects of the series, many of which I enjoy.

The prologue of the book brings up an interesting point I think: this isn't the average children's novel. It doesn't seem to be as magical or clean as say, a Harry Potter story is (although it has been quite some time since I last read one of those). I think it finds a niche somewhere between an adult-based murder/action novel and a more toned down Harry Potter fantasy story. I would have liked to see it even more in the direction of the grittier, Ian Fleming styled novels, but this is Young Bond. The eels are a great idea and used effectively throughout the entire story.

The first section of the story, ETON, tells of young "James", (a bit odd not to see it written as "Bond" all the time now) finding his way through school. Higson writes to make him seem like a loner or different than all the other boys at times, but it seems to generally work. I expected a childhood rivalry and/or confrontation(s) to occur, so they didn't really surprise me when they did.

So far at least, Higson has clearly made this his own James Bond, perhaps he has the benefit of not having to follow after Fleming like Gardner and Benson did with the older James Bond we're used to.

SCOTLAND is the next section of the book, and the poorest in my opinion. While Red Kelly makes for a fair ally (he really doesn't seem to be needed all that much), the weakest character by far in the entire story is "Bond girl" Wilder Lawless. Why, oh why, oh why did that horse have to be named Martini? She has little character development and that so called risque passage where she pins down James on the ground is more embarrassing and out of place than...hmm...risque. Stuffing leaves in his mouth?

THE CASTLE, the third and final section of the story is the best I would say. I look at the villains of movies and books as often being just as important as the hero. You need a strong villain to show off a strong hero. At least in SilverFin, we have a fairly good villain in Lord Randolph Hellebore. I'm not going to go deep at all into descriptions about him or his plan due to spoiler issues, but I think he is developed well from beginning to end.

At least in this final section we get to the action, the adventure, and the danger of a James Bond story. His escape from the castle, and the ordeals with the eels are well thoughtout.

The ending may not seem as too big a surprise to readers, it didn't to me personally, but it was still relatively enjoyable. I was pleased to see a change in Bond's actions and character towards the very end of the novel compared with what we see in the first sections of the story.

In the end, it's not a Harry Potter novel. It's darker and more distinct in it's own ways and being a change from the normal continuation novels may help it to become more enjoyable for some fans. We have a relatively good start to this series in SilverFin. Now I'm looking for an even better Young Bond #2 next year.

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