From Russia with Love

From Russia with Love Book Cover
First Edition cover

As part of my one-person celebration of all things Bond, in honour of the 50th anniversary of Bond films and leading up to the (scandalously delayed) Australian release of Skyfall, I’ve not only been rewatching all the films on Bluray, but I’ve finally started reading the novels.

The books are quite good and seem to get better written with each one.  One surprise from the books is that Bond is far less cynical about bedding women than in the films – he actually falls in love more than once, even if he seems to think that relationships are doomed to eventual failure.

I’m up to From Russia with Love, and it’s definitely the most assured so far. It has an interesting structure too – I was over a third into the book before Bond appeared. Hard to imagine a film doing that, though the Connery film did delay Bond’s appearance a bit compared to the other films.

Most reviewers claim FRWL is the best Bond novel, and so after this one I guess it’s all downhill, but so far so good.