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James Bond - Extended Series #15
Colonel Sun: James Bond 007
First published in 1968, four years after Ian Fleming’s death, this was the first Bond ‘continuation’ novel, penned by one of Britain’s finest novelists, Kingsley Amis.
‘A man in my line of business shouldn’t work to a timetable’
Lunch at Scott's, a quiet game of golf, a routine social call on his chief M – James Bond’s life has begun to fall into a pattern that threatens complacency…until the sunny afternoon when M is kidnapped and his house staff savagely murdered. The action ricochets across the globe to a volcanic Greek island where, stripped of all professional aids, Bond must avert a world-menacing conspiracy and face unarmed the monstrous devices of the glacial, merciless Colonel Sun.
‘A man in my line of business shouldn’t work to a timetable’
Lunch at Scott's, a quiet game of golf, a routine social call on his chief M – James Bond’s life has begun to fall into a pattern that threatens complacency…until the sunny afternoon when M is kidnapped and his house staff savagely murdered. The action ricochets across the globe to a volcanic Greek island where, stripped of all professional aids, Bond must avert a world-menacing conspiracy and face unarmed the monstrous devices of the glacial, merciless Colonel Sun.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 28, 1968
117 people are currently reading
2406 people want to read
About the author
Kingsley Amis
210 books553 followersBest known novels of British writer Sir Kingsley William Amis include
Lucky Jim
(1954) and
The Old Devils
(1986).
This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.
William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.
Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner
This English poet, critic, and teacher composed more than twenty-three collections, short stories, radio and television scripts, and books of social and literary criticism. He fathered Martin Amis.
William Robert Amis, a clerk of a mustard manufacturer, fathered him. He began his education at the city of London school, and went up to college of Saint John, Oxford, in April 1941 to read English; he met Philip Larkin and formed the most important friendship of his life. After only a year, the Army called him for service in July 1942. After serving as a lieutenant in the royal corps of signals in the Second World War, Amis returned to Oxford in October 1945 to complete his degree. He worked hard and got a first in English in 1947, and then decided to devote much of his time.
Pen names: [authorRobert Markham|553548] and William Bill Tanner
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 269 reviews
June 28, 2023
I remember enjoying this when I read it 10 years ago. It’s left me utterly cold now.
There was all that fuss the other year about Sebastian Faulks, an actual literary author (unlike John Gardner or Raymond Benson) being hired to write a James Bond novel. Wasn't it incredible? Proof of the high esteem in which Fleming's writing is held.
But ignored in all the coverage was that the Fleming estate had hired a literary author to write a James Bond novel before. It might say Robert Markham on the front of this novel, but step forward Mr Kingsley Amis.
One of the things about books like this is that a certain level of pastiche is inevitable. Of course the author doesn’t want to go so far that it all becomes parody, but he does want to mimic the voice of the original while telling his own tale. And on this score, Kingsley Amis (a writer not traditionally known for his thrillers) does Fleming perfectly. He really captures that mix of sex, sadism and the lash – as well as all the excessive consumption that James Bond does so well. In fact it’s so accurate it could be mistaken for a lost Fleming (it’s better than ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’, certainly) and maybe that isn’t so surprising as – despite their different backgrounds – Amis and Fleming were much the same type of Englishman. Indeed both writers throughout their work gradually become more hard core conservative and reactionary. No doubt if Fleming had lived, Mrs Thatcher would have given him a knighthood too.
Following the events of ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ a soft and bored James Bond is suddenly thrust from London into a great adventure off the Greek coast which has dangerous consequences for the whole world. There’s a beautiful woman, guns, boats, an over the top villain and a brutal torture scene. What more could anyone really want?
There was all that fuss the other year about Sebastian Faulks, an actual literary author (unlike John Gardner or Raymond Benson) being hired to write a James Bond novel. Wasn't it incredible? Proof of the high esteem in which Fleming's writing is held.
But ignored in all the coverage was that the Fleming estate had hired a literary author to write a James Bond novel before. It might say Robert Markham on the front of this novel, but step forward Mr Kingsley Amis.
One of the things about books like this is that a certain level of pastiche is inevitable. Of course the author doesn’t want to go so far that it all becomes parody, but he does want to mimic the voice of the original while telling his own tale. And on this score, Kingsley Amis (a writer not traditionally known for his thrillers) does Fleming perfectly. He really captures that mix of sex, sadism and the lash – as well as all the excessive consumption that James Bond does so well. In fact it’s so accurate it could be mistaken for a lost Fleming (it’s better than ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’, certainly) and maybe that isn’t so surprising as – despite their different backgrounds – Amis and Fleming were much the same type of Englishman. Indeed both writers throughout their work gradually become more hard core conservative and reactionary. No doubt if Fleming had lived, Mrs Thatcher would have given him a knighthood too.
Following the events of ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ a soft and bored James Bond is suddenly thrust from London into a great adventure off the Greek coast which has dangerous consequences for the whole world. There’s a beautiful woman, guns, boats, an over the top villain and a brutal torture scene. What more could anyone really want?
April 4, 2025
One has to admire the sheer chutzpah of attempting to take up the mantle of Ian Fleming a mere four years after his passing in 1964 (probably a publishing decision). Colonel Sun is a great attempt to do an accurate, faithful Bond novel that succeeds on a number of levels but fails (IMHO) in one glaring way. As preamble to the torture sequence, Markham says that Bond looks at the instruments of torture and feels fear in his heart. I think Fleming would have said Bond prepared himself mentally for the pain he was about to undergo.
I don't expect Bond to be superhuman, but he has proven himself to think about, perceive things in a different way than most people. Looking at the torture devices, I might die just in visualizing. On the other hand, Bond would be visualizing all the ways he can turn the situation around. This might just be a nitpick, but when I read it, it seemed like such a non-Fleming thing to say, it stood out.
It has been a while since Bond had gotten an assignment, but he was going to visit M and finds that M is in the process of being abducted. 007 is unable to prevent the abduction, but he is immediately thrust into a pursuit that leads to Greece, a conference hosted by Middle Easterners and the Soviet Union, there's a Nazi, World War II era weapons, and a gorgeous Communist, Greek agent named Ariadne Alexandrou, and a top-notch Chinese villain.
To be fair, the beats are consistent with other James Bond books, with the bonus of also being cinematic. The characters are well-developed with the potential to be in other novels like Felix Leiter, and Sylvia Trench. The book is not perfect, but it was a better than adequate start.
I don't expect Bond to be superhuman, but he has proven himself to think about, perceive things in a different way than most people. Looking at the torture devices, I might die just in visualizing. On the other hand, Bond would be visualizing all the ways he can turn the situation around. This might just be a nitpick, but when I read it, it seemed like such a non-Fleming thing to say, it stood out.
It has been a while since Bond had gotten an assignment, but he was going to visit M and finds that M is in the process of being abducted. 007 is unable to prevent the abduction, but he is immediately thrust into a pursuit that leads to Greece, a conference hosted by Middle Easterners and the Soviet Union, there's a Nazi, World War II era weapons, and a gorgeous Communist, Greek agent named Ariadne Alexandrou, and a top-notch Chinese villain.
To be fair, the beats are consistent with other James Bond books, with the bonus of also being cinematic. The characters are well-developed with the potential to be in other novels like Felix Leiter, and Sylvia Trench. The book is not perfect, but it was a better than adequate start.
Want to read
March 28, 2018I also own this in another version, that I read many years ago published as "Colonel Sun (James Bond - Extended Series #15)" by Robert Markham.
October 16, 2021
***3.5 STARS***
Interesting Bond written by Kinglsey Amis the famed author of Lucky Jim. An odd pairing of author and character, but Amis makes it work. In the canon this is the first Bond after Ian Fleming's last book. I love the Daliesque wraparound cover.
Interesting Bond written by Kinglsey Amis the famed author of Lucky Jim. An odd pairing of author and character, but Amis makes it work. In the canon this is the first Bond after Ian Fleming's last book. I love the Daliesque wraparound cover.
March 4, 2021
A straightforward plot, yet enjoyable nonetheless for the well depicted setting in the Greek islands and some colorful characters. The main villain, the eponymous Colonel Sun, is memorable for his penchant for sadistic torture. Interestingly, though never making into film itself, the 2015 Bond film Spectre features a harrowing torture scene which was lifted from Colonel Sun.
The Bond portrayed here is somber, with few scruples, out to avenge M's kidnapping and the related murders of several friends. My favorite bits find Bond contemplating the attractions of civilian life, deeply concerned that he's going soft. Later, lamenting the homogenization of western civilization but realizing it's yet preferable to the coerced conformity of the east. Also notable is the role of China as an ascendant global adversary here, to the east and west both.
This is the first non-Fleming Bond book, published just four years after his death, and the only one written by Markham, i.e. Kingsley Amis, which is kind of a shame. There's then a gap of thirteen years before the next original Bond story was published in 1981, License Renewed by John Gardner.
The Bond portrayed here is somber, with few scruples, out to avenge M's kidnapping and the related murders of several friends. My favorite bits find Bond contemplating the attractions of civilian life, deeply concerned that he's going soft. Later, lamenting the homogenization of western civilization but realizing it's yet preferable to the coerced conformity of the east. Also notable is the role of China as an ascendant global adversary here, to the east and west both.
This is the first non-Fleming Bond book, published just four years after his death, and the only one written by Markham, i.e. Kingsley Amis, which is kind of a shame. There's then a gap of thirteen years before the next original Bond story was published in 1981, License Renewed by John Gardner.
February 24, 2022
Lost a star for the anti-Chinese racism.
July 2, 2021
Well, THAT was disappointing. Having recently read Bond vs. Bond: The Many Faces of 007 (an overview of the Bond character in the original books, subsequent books, and movies), I thought it might be interesting to try one of the more highly-recommended post-Fleming books; and as this was both the first, figured this would be a good place to start.
I haven't read a "real" Bond book in decades, so maybe they were always this bad - silly, sexist, and generally stupid - but at least the Fleming books were all classics; however, Colonel Sun can't claim that status or authorship, and so has to be judged on its own merits - which are few indeed.
The plot is low-risk by Bond standards - the Chinese try to sabotage a Russian conference and pin it on the Brits - and while the name implies a cool Asia-based story, the whole thing takes place in the Greek islands, (one of the few areas of the world in which I have zero literary interest). Bond himself remains just an awful spy, good only at getting caught and then escaping - the latter only because he has so much damned practice. Once they finally appear, both main villains - the ex-Nazi von Richter and the endlessly-"yellow" Colonel Sun (so yes, add "racist" to "sexist and stupid") - can't help endlessly explaining their plans to Bond, so that they come across as less genuinely evil than pure Dr. Evil. It also doesn't help that narrator Simon Vance's Greek/German/Chinese accents are both bad and confusing, so that I was often not sure just who was speaking.
Anyway…that's if for me and Bond, at least for a while. The only other "new Bond" I've read was the even worse License Renewed (and I just have to again note that the lead female character here was named "Lavender Peacock"), and so the only book remaining that I might EVER consider reading now is the slightly-better-reviewed and much more recent Carte Blanche…but not for a good while at least, since it will take more than a few vodka martinis to get the taste of this stinker out of my mouth.
I haven't read a "real" Bond book in decades, so maybe they were always this bad - silly, sexist, and generally stupid - but at least the Fleming books were all classics; however, Colonel Sun can't claim that status or authorship, and so has to be judged on its own merits - which are few indeed.
The plot is low-risk by Bond standards - the Chinese try to sabotage a Russian conference and pin it on the Brits - and while the name implies a cool Asia-based story, the whole thing takes place in the Greek islands, (one of the few areas of the world in which I have zero literary interest). Bond himself remains just an awful spy, good only at getting caught and then escaping - the latter only because he has so much damned practice. Once they finally appear, both main villains - the ex-Nazi von Richter and the endlessly-"yellow" Colonel Sun (so yes, add "racist" to "sexist and stupid") - can't help endlessly explaining their plans to Bond, so that they come across as less genuinely evil than pure Dr. Evil. It also doesn't help that narrator Simon Vance's Greek/German/Chinese accents are both bad and confusing, so that I was often not sure just who was speaking.
Anyway…that's if for me and Bond, at least for a while. The only other "new Bond" I've read was the even worse License Renewed (and I just have to again note that the lead female character here was named "Lavender Peacock"), and so the only book remaining that I might EVER consider reading now is the slightly-better-reviewed and much more recent Carte Blanche…but not for a good while at least, since it will take more than a few vodka martinis to get the taste of this stinker out of my mouth.
April 16, 2018
Where do I start?
Because Kindles let you do crazy stuff like this, I bought all of Fleming's Bond books and binge-read them. This was interesting as an exercise as it revealed Fleming's preoccupations, booze, misogyny and bigotry very much included. They bear down on the reader with considerable weight. You stagger away from the experience with the impression that Ian Fleming was a really unpleasant wee man who had discovered, much as had Elizabeth David, the rewards of offering escapism to the post-war British.
Casino Royale happened to a generation of people still coping with rationing, to whom Bond's Krug-guzzling, leggy blonde fondling, avocado-scooping lifestyle was wonderful indeed. As we started to face the realities of the End of Empire, Bond made us feel relevant. In the 1950s we needed heroes and leggy women in fast cars to liven up our brown world of weak tea, powdered egg and fag smoke.
Then Fleming's hooch and nicotine consumption got the better of him and his publishers, faced with that most feared of all publishing disasters - a dead cash cow - farmed out the Bond franchise. The first writer of these non-Fleming Bonds was Robert Markham, as eny fule no these days, we're actually talking celebrated satirist and literary giant Kingsley Amis.
The question I kept coming back to throughout my difficult time reading Colonel Sun was whether Amis was doing this for the LOLs. The whole thing is so very badly done, the writing, dialogue and characters so stilted and the situations so very wooden, that you wonder but then you pull back and debate whether writing very, very badly is the stuff of satire. If this is satire, then it is very subtle indeed for its time - we're looking at fifty-odd years before The Office.
Have a look at this - an action scene:
"Bond dropped to his knees, shoved out of the way the legs of the man he had stabbed, got his finger through the brass ring of the trapdoor and heaved it aside. The roar of well-tuned machinery and an engine-room smell came up at him. He moved to the deck immediately outside the doorway and there, swiftly and methodically drew from the pouches at his waist the four Mills grenades. Each was surrounded by a half-inch-thick protective coating of heavy-duty grease from the Altair’s stores. Again he made no delay, but with quick deft movements grasped one grenade after another in his right hand, drew out the safety-pin with his left index finger, and tossed all four down the hatchway before the seven-second fuse of the first had had time to release the firing-pin. Then it came, a monstrous pounding, shivering bang underfoot that made the deck boards leap as if struck with a massive hammer, the buzz of flying metal, a wash of flame above the hatchway."
See? It's just not very good.
"The breeze was whipping the blaze for’ard and Bond caught the glow of flames sweeping the deckhouse. He could hear the roar of fuel-fired combustion. Something aft went up with a kind of puffing bellow and bunch of flame, intensely orange in colour, jerked and eddied outwards. Not for the first time in his career, Bond felt a surge of sickening remorse at the gross, outrageous destruction he had caused, the stabbing of the man in the pilot’s seat and the unknown, but probably dreadful fate of the other. He tried to push the thought out of his mind. It was necessary, he told himself. It was duty."
'A kind of puffing bellow'? Yew. Throughout the book, the writing's at best pedestrian. Bond walks quickly and stomachs lurch suddenly, bellies betray no sign of fat and calculations are made in split seconds.
Reluctantly, I came to the conclusion that no, we're not looking at satire here. We're looking at someone trying to give Bond readers what they want. And in attempting that, Markham/Amis amplifies the worst aspects of Bond and neglects the good aspects of him. That finding the good aspects of Bond is rather like searching haystacks perhaps doesn't help.
To sum up the plot: nothing much really happens because there's no reason really for anything to happen. M is kidnapped and Bond goes on holiday in Greece. There's a bad Chinese guy and a good Greek guy. There are various other guys who sort of pop in and out. We muck around in boats, eat Greek food and lament the Greeks are quite as lazy and crap as they are, apart from busty Greek bird Ariadne who Bond turns from Communism to enthusiastic screwing - something they indulge in at every opportunity. There are lashings of ouzo. The bad Chinese guy wants to torture Bond to satisfy the code of the Chinese or something. There are more girls. They are Albanian and so like to screw men.
There's a man who's a fairy. Oh, yes, I know this is of its time, but still...
"Ariadne nodded vigorously. ‘Right. I was exactly the person he couldn’t believe. I’m Greek, so I’m backward and stupid and a peasant. Then I’m a woman.’ ‘Oh, he’s ...’ – Litsas gestured – ‘one of the boys, is he?’ ‘Yes: you should have seen the look he gave Yanni.’"
A little later, the character's defined more deftly: "a fat little fairy."
The racism and sexism are both very much in evidence, overdone to a tee. The Chinese are very chinky-winky, the girls are all winky-winky and the fat fairies are very Tinkywinky. It's all so obvious and, well, wearying.
I started taking notes after a while, realising that the only thing keeping me going was that the whole thing was so monumentally bad that it was worth the effort just for the celebration of its total crapness. I finally, with an enormous sigh of relief, got to the end. The baddy Chinaman goes to his death shouting, 'Damn you, Bond!'
I felt his pain, truly I did.
Because Kindles let you do crazy stuff like this, I bought all of Fleming's Bond books and binge-read them. This was interesting as an exercise as it revealed Fleming's preoccupations, booze, misogyny and bigotry very much included. They bear down on the reader with considerable weight. You stagger away from the experience with the impression that Ian Fleming was a really unpleasant wee man who had discovered, much as had Elizabeth David, the rewards of offering escapism to the post-war British.
Casino Royale happened to a generation of people still coping with rationing, to whom Bond's Krug-guzzling, leggy blonde fondling, avocado-scooping lifestyle was wonderful indeed. As we started to face the realities of the End of Empire, Bond made us feel relevant. In the 1950s we needed heroes and leggy women in fast cars to liven up our brown world of weak tea, powdered egg and fag smoke.
Then Fleming's hooch and nicotine consumption got the better of him and his publishers, faced with that most feared of all publishing disasters - a dead cash cow - farmed out the Bond franchise. The first writer of these non-Fleming Bonds was Robert Markham, as eny fule no these days, we're actually talking celebrated satirist and literary giant Kingsley Amis.
The question I kept coming back to throughout my difficult time reading Colonel Sun was whether Amis was doing this for the LOLs. The whole thing is so very badly done, the writing, dialogue and characters so stilted and the situations so very wooden, that you wonder but then you pull back and debate whether writing very, very badly is the stuff of satire. If this is satire, then it is very subtle indeed for its time - we're looking at fifty-odd years before The Office.
Have a look at this - an action scene:
"Bond dropped to his knees, shoved out of the way the legs of the man he had stabbed, got his finger through the brass ring of the trapdoor and heaved it aside. The roar of well-tuned machinery and an engine-room smell came up at him. He moved to the deck immediately outside the doorway and there, swiftly and methodically drew from the pouches at his waist the four Mills grenades. Each was surrounded by a half-inch-thick protective coating of heavy-duty grease from the Altair’s stores. Again he made no delay, but with quick deft movements grasped one grenade after another in his right hand, drew out the safety-pin with his left index finger, and tossed all four down the hatchway before the seven-second fuse of the first had had time to release the firing-pin. Then it came, a monstrous pounding, shivering bang underfoot that made the deck boards leap as if struck with a massive hammer, the buzz of flying metal, a wash of flame above the hatchway."
See? It's just not very good.
"The breeze was whipping the blaze for’ard and Bond caught the glow of flames sweeping the deckhouse. He could hear the roar of fuel-fired combustion. Something aft went up with a kind of puffing bellow and bunch of flame, intensely orange in colour, jerked and eddied outwards. Not for the first time in his career, Bond felt a surge of sickening remorse at the gross, outrageous destruction he had caused, the stabbing of the man in the pilot’s seat and the unknown, but probably dreadful fate of the other. He tried to push the thought out of his mind. It was necessary, he told himself. It was duty."
'A kind of puffing bellow'? Yew. Throughout the book, the writing's at best pedestrian. Bond walks quickly and stomachs lurch suddenly, bellies betray no sign of fat and calculations are made in split seconds.
Reluctantly, I came to the conclusion that no, we're not looking at satire here. We're looking at someone trying to give Bond readers what they want. And in attempting that, Markham/Amis amplifies the worst aspects of Bond and neglects the good aspects of him. That finding the good aspects of Bond is rather like searching haystacks perhaps doesn't help.
To sum up the plot: nothing much really happens because there's no reason really for anything to happen. M is kidnapped and Bond goes on holiday in Greece. There's a bad Chinese guy and a good Greek guy. There are various other guys who sort of pop in and out. We muck around in boats, eat Greek food and lament the Greeks are quite as lazy and crap as they are, apart from busty Greek bird Ariadne who Bond turns from Communism to enthusiastic screwing - something they indulge in at every opportunity. There are lashings of ouzo. The bad Chinese guy wants to torture Bond to satisfy the code of the Chinese or something. There are more girls. They are Albanian and so like to screw men.
There's a man who's a fairy. Oh, yes, I know this is of its time, but still...
"Ariadne nodded vigorously. ‘Right. I was exactly the person he couldn’t believe. I’m Greek, so I’m backward and stupid and a peasant. Then I’m a woman.’ ‘Oh, he’s ...’ – Litsas gestured – ‘one of the boys, is he?’ ‘Yes: you should have seen the look he gave Yanni.’"
A little later, the character's defined more deftly: "a fat little fairy."
The racism and sexism are both very much in evidence, overdone to a tee. The Chinese are very chinky-winky, the girls are all winky-winky and the fat fairies are very Tinkywinky. It's all so obvious and, well, wearying.
I started taking notes after a while, realising that the only thing keeping me going was that the whole thing was so monumentally bad that it was worth the effort just for the celebration of its total crapness. I finally, with an enormous sigh of relief, got to the end. The baddy Chinaman goes to his death shouting, 'Damn you, Bond!'
I felt his pain, truly I did.
June 17, 2025
It's been many, many years since I last read Colonel Sun & this audio version, read by the excellent Simon Vace, brings the story nicely to life.
The opening few chapters, where we find James Bond playing golf & the kidnapping of M, are so well written you could almost belive that Ian Fleming had penned them himself. The final chapters feature a well staged torture scene that would have easily fitted into one of Fleming's 007 adventures.
However, the main section of the novel is extremely dull & completely lacks any tension or excitement. It's not as bad as William Boyd's James Bond novel Solo, but it's a close second. I wondered why I hadn't read this book for so long. Now I know!
The opening few chapters, where we find James Bond playing golf & the kidnapping of M, are so well written you could almost belive that Ian Fleming had penned them himself. The final chapters feature a well staged torture scene that would have easily fitted into one of Fleming's 007 adventures.
However, the main section of the novel is extremely dull & completely lacks any tension or excitement. It's not as bad as William Boyd's James Bond novel Solo, but it's a close second. I wondered why I hadn't read this book for so long. Now I know!
July 19, 2021
2.5
After M is abducted, James Bond tracks him down to Greece.
Published in 1968, this first non-Fleming James Bond book is written by literary heavyweight Kingsley Amis, under the name Robert Markham. My second reading of this book confirms my original thoughts – that what it demonstrates is how underrated Ian Fleming is as a writer, because Amis fails here in almost every department.
There are two good things. The opening forty-five pages, which involves M’s abduction, is pacey and well told. Secondly, towards the end of the novel we have a torture scene that is worthy of, and very Fleming in its telling. But that all amounts to about fifty-five pages. Almost the whole of the rest is mind-numbingly dull; much of it being very flat dialogue spoken between characters we know little of, and care nothing for.
What makes Ian Fleming’s Bond books so enjoyable to read is the atmosphere – achieved through snappy and concise description. Through them, we inhabit a time and feel of long ago, from the ambiance of Bond’s claustrophobic work environment, to the period atmosphere and exotic locales from around the world in the 1950s and 60s. On top of this he populates the books with memorable characters, colourful dialogue, and infuses them with a sense of danger and brooding tension. Here, after a fine start, all pace and tension unfortunately disappears when Bond arrives in Greece. At no time do I get any sense of feel or colour for the place, and characterisation is practically nil. It was a real struggle reading through pages and pages of dreary dialogue spoken by characters that are not formed. It all just fails to ignite.
There’s a warm glow that emanates from Fleming’s books, that for the admirer is a joy to read. Colonel Sun on the other hand feels icily cold – written without passion, or even interest. Amis is said to have been an admirer of Fleming’s Bond books (even looking over the manuscript of the last one, The Man With The Golden Gun, after Fleming’s death), but after making an enthusiastic stab here with the opening four chapters, he instantly seems to run out of steam and inspiration.
Of the non-Fleming Bond books that I’ve read, Anthony Horowitz, for me, comes closest to capturing the feel of Fleming; but unfortunately saddles the two novels that I’ve read (Forever And A Day and Trigger Mortis) with rather dull plots.
My Fleming originals are with me for life, often re-read; this one I’ll be taking for a walk to the charity shop later…
After M is abducted, James Bond tracks him down to Greece.
Published in 1968, this first non-Fleming James Bond book is written by literary heavyweight Kingsley Amis, under the name Robert Markham. My second reading of this book confirms my original thoughts – that what it demonstrates is how underrated Ian Fleming is as a writer, because Amis fails here in almost every department.
There are two good things. The opening forty-five pages, which involves M’s abduction, is pacey and well told. Secondly, towards the end of the novel we have a torture scene that is worthy of, and very Fleming in its telling. But that all amounts to about fifty-five pages. Almost the whole of the rest is mind-numbingly dull; much of it being very flat dialogue spoken between characters we know little of, and care nothing for.
What makes Ian Fleming’s Bond books so enjoyable to read is the atmosphere – achieved through snappy and concise description. Through them, we inhabit a time and feel of long ago, from the ambiance of Bond’s claustrophobic work environment, to the period atmosphere and exotic locales from around the world in the 1950s and 60s. On top of this he populates the books with memorable characters, colourful dialogue, and infuses them with a sense of danger and brooding tension. Here, after a fine start, all pace and tension unfortunately disappears when Bond arrives in Greece. At no time do I get any sense of feel or colour for the place, and characterisation is practically nil. It was a real struggle reading through pages and pages of dreary dialogue spoken by characters that are not formed. It all just fails to ignite.
There’s a warm glow that emanates from Fleming’s books, that for the admirer is a joy to read. Colonel Sun on the other hand feels icily cold – written without passion, or even interest. Amis is said to have been an admirer of Fleming’s Bond books (even looking over the manuscript of the last one, The Man With The Golden Gun, after Fleming’s death), but after making an enthusiastic stab here with the opening four chapters, he instantly seems to run out of steam and inspiration.
Of the non-Fleming Bond books that I’ve read, Anthony Horowitz, for me, comes closest to capturing the feel of Fleming; but unfortunately saddles the two novels that I’ve read (Forever And A Day and Trigger Mortis) with rather dull plots.
My Fleming originals are with me for life, often re-read; this one I’ll be taking for a walk to the charity shop later…
June 24, 2017
Bottom line first Kingsley Amis writing under the name of Robert Marham has captured the formula and failed to add the variations that might give it life. The result is a legitimate salute to the master but a relatively flat read. I do not think this story would stand alone absent the James Bond Brand. Mr. Amis handles his role as a stand in for the deceased Ian Flemming, but he lacks the pacing and the fails to add in the finer descriptions that can be found in the originals.
In the Original James Bond Books, Ian Fleming created a formula for the high living Secret Agent. As owner of the franchise he played with it, sometimes using a short story format, sometime sending his man against threats against the world and sometimes just second rate thugs. Towards the end, Fleming did get influenced by the grandiose plots in the movies, but his writing always provided some moments of lyricism. In particular when writing of Island life, something he loved, a reader could feel the rhythm of life and the lure of the sun.
Kingsly Amis was an accomplished writer of novels, having made his name with his first novel a comedy, Lucky Jim. Years later he proclaimed his serious interest in the Secret Agent with his analytical study http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_...
This a fairly straight up analysis. How many females per book, how many and what kind of drinks, cars and etc. The feel of Colonel Sun is that Amis was tied too closely to his analysis and not close enough to his inspiration.
Colonel Sun is a fairly imaginative plot. M, the masterful head of Bond secret government agency id kidnapped in a bold, life is cheap attack that nearly nets 007. What follows is what has become the standard anti-bureaucratic high level meeting and then Bond places himself in the trap because he knows “they will find him”.
They turn out to be a new player in European skullduggery and being new they break all the rules and thereby provide a motivation for Bond to form an alliance with the Commies. And we are off. A sexy woman, the local ex resistance fighter. Regular gun fights and well the double 0 does mean Bond is licensed to kill. Amis staying to the written bond eschews the gadgetry and winning is a matter of trade craft over technology.
Like all Bond books, Colonel Sun is mostly fluff for the male reader, but there is too much formula and not enough creativity.
In the Original James Bond Books, Ian Fleming created a formula for the high living Secret Agent. As owner of the franchise he played with it, sometimes using a short story format, sometime sending his man against threats against the world and sometimes just second rate thugs. Towards the end, Fleming did get influenced by the grandiose plots in the movies, but his writing always provided some moments of lyricism. In particular when writing of Island life, something he loved, a reader could feel the rhythm of life and the lure of the sun.
Kingsly Amis was an accomplished writer of novels, having made his name with his first novel a comedy, Lucky Jim. Years later he proclaimed his serious interest in the Secret Agent with his analytical study http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_...
This a fairly straight up analysis. How many females per book, how many and what kind of drinks, cars and etc. The feel of Colonel Sun is that Amis was tied too closely to his analysis and not close enough to his inspiration.
Colonel Sun is a fairly imaginative plot. M, the masterful head of Bond secret government agency id kidnapped in a bold, life is cheap attack that nearly nets 007. What follows is what has become the standard anti-bureaucratic high level meeting and then Bond places himself in the trap because he knows “they will find him”.
They turn out to be a new player in European skullduggery and being new they break all the rules and thereby provide a motivation for Bond to form an alliance with the Commies. And we are off. A sexy woman, the local ex resistance fighter. Regular gun fights and well the double 0 does mean Bond is licensed to kill. Amis staying to the written bond eschews the gadgetry and winning is a matter of trade craft over technology.
Like all Bond books, Colonel Sun is mostly fluff for the male reader, but there is too much formula and not enough creativity.
November 6, 2015
Bond is dead, long live Bond! With Ian Fleming no longer in a position to write Bond, the estate of Fleming approached Kingsley Amis to continue the story with a new novel. Rumoured to have completed Fleming's last novel, The Man With the Golden Gun, Amis was maybe the natural choice.
And to be honest, it's pretty good. Much slower paced than a Fleming at his best, this novel never really seems to quite hit the level of excitement or anticipation that it was presumably aiming for. M has been kidnapped, and the attempt to kidnap Bond has failed. Bond must head to Greece to get to the bottom of the whole affair, rescue M, have some sexy Greek sex and foil an international plot to disrupt a secret Russian meeting.
The book is well written, the style Flemingesque, just not at his best...
And to be honest, it's pretty good. Much slower paced than a Fleming at his best, this novel never really seems to quite hit the level of excitement or anticipation that it was presumably aiming for. M has been kidnapped, and the attempt to kidnap Bond has failed. Bond must head to Greece to get to the bottom of the whole affair, rescue M, have some sexy Greek sex and foil an international plot to disrupt a secret Russian meeting.
The book is well written, the style Flemingesque, just not at his best...
September 23, 2022
Book Review - Extremely pleased to have added this rare James Bond ‘collectible’ to my book collection - “Colonel Sun” by Kingsley Amis. Colonel Sun is the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's death. Before writing the novel, Amis wrote two other Bond related works, the literary study “The James Bond Dossier” and the humorous “The Book of Bond.” Colonel Sun centers on the 007 British Secret Service operative James Bond and his mission to track down the kidnappers of M, his boss. During the mission, 007 discovers a communist Chinese plot lead by Colonel Sun to cause an international incident. Assisted by a Greek spy working for the Russians, Bond finds M on a small island in the Aegean Sea where he rescues M, stops the diabolical international incident, and kills the two main plotters, Colonel Sun and a former Nazi commander. Lots of violent action, sadistic scenarios, and sexy scenes with beautiful women, Colonel Sun is an intense, vigorous and exciting Bond thriller for 007 fans and the like. Lucky to obtain this “James Bond 007 jewel.”
October 7, 2024
As a teenager I was a fan of all things James Bond. It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I encountered Kingsley Amis’s work and came to appreciate his writings. This made the discovery that Amis had been commissioned to write a James Bond novel — the first one written after Ian Fleming’s death — quite the surprise. As much as I had enjoyed Bond’s adventures, to me it was akin to learning that Tom Stoppard wrote the script for one of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies. And naturally I had to read it.
Because it had been so long since I had read any of Fleming’s original novels, I came to Amis’s book largely unburdened by expectations set by them. And this may have enhanced my appreciation for what he does in it. Picking up where Fleming’s stories left off, Amis opens months later with Bond recovered but largely inactive. Worried that his abilities are atrophying, he’s put to the test unexpectedly when he is nearly kidnapped along with his boss by a team of agents. Though Bond eludes capture, he decides to pursue the obvious lure left behind for him and goes to Greece, where he quickly finds himself in the middle of an attempt to disrupt the global order and pin the blame on the British.
As premises go, it offers stakes that are somewhat lower than some of Bond’s previous adventures. And Amis’s novel is all the better for it, as he offers a more grounded story to his readers than some of the ones from his predecessor. While Amis was a fan of Fleming’s work, the novel in some ways comes across as a subtle critique of its sillier elements. Gone are the international criminal super-syndicates, the gadgets, and the flamboyant antagonists. Instead readers are treated to a plot involving secret agents pursuing Cold War agendas in an exotic setting by whatever means necessary, usually ones involving violence.
Yet for all of Amis’s paring down of the Bond formula, his protagonist is recognizably the James Bond from Fleming’s novels, drinking, seducing and killing his way through his mission. Amis offers a deeper exploration of his main character, as well as those of the other main ones. Because this is done from the same perspective as Fleming’s, much of the casual racism, misogyny and homophobia contained within those books survives intact in this one. This as much as the Cold War plot makes the novel very much an artifact of its time and certainly impacts the ability to enjoy it today. Nevertheless, any reader who is fond of Fleming’s original work will want to seek out this book, as it is in many respects the most faithful continuation of it that is likely ever to be written.
Because it had been so long since I had read any of Fleming’s original novels, I came to Amis’s book largely unburdened by expectations set by them. And this may have enhanced my appreciation for what he does in it. Picking up where Fleming’s stories left off, Amis opens months later with Bond recovered but largely inactive. Worried that his abilities are atrophying, he’s put to the test unexpectedly when he is nearly kidnapped along with his boss by a team of agents. Though Bond eludes capture, he decides to pursue the obvious lure left behind for him and goes to Greece, where he quickly finds himself in the middle of an attempt to disrupt the global order and pin the blame on the British.
As premises go, it offers stakes that are somewhat lower than some of Bond’s previous adventures. And Amis’s novel is all the better for it, as he offers a more grounded story to his readers than some of the ones from his predecessor. While Amis was a fan of Fleming’s work, the novel in some ways comes across as a subtle critique of its sillier elements. Gone are the international criminal super-syndicates, the gadgets, and the flamboyant antagonists. Instead readers are treated to a plot involving secret agents pursuing Cold War agendas in an exotic setting by whatever means necessary, usually ones involving violence.
Yet for all of Amis’s paring down of the Bond formula, his protagonist is recognizably the James Bond from Fleming’s novels, drinking, seducing and killing his way through his mission. Amis offers a deeper exploration of his main character, as well as those of the other main ones. Because this is done from the same perspective as Fleming’s, much of the casual racism, misogyny and homophobia contained within those books survives intact in this one. This as much as the Cold War plot makes the novel very much an artifact of its time and certainly impacts the ability to enjoy it today. Nevertheless, any reader who is fond of Fleming’s original work will want to seek out this book, as it is in many respects the most faithful continuation of it that is likely ever to be written.
August 28, 2011
I'd say 2.5 stars, but I can't quite give it 3.
The plot is somewhat uninspired. Not bad, just typical Bond and nothing too intriguing in the story. Not bad and not a waste of time, though with the audio I did find my mind wandering on occasion. The villain, Colonel Sun, is fairly typical for an old-school Bond villain, but he's kinda cool. He has a couple of sidekick sultry gorgeous women and an interesting torture technique that made things a little interesting.
The Bond girl, Ariadne, was pretty good, but not a lot to write home about either as far as uniqueness.
The reader on the audio was kinda blah. Not horrible, but some of his accents and voices were annoying.
This was written in 1968, as the first of the non-Fleming novels published after his death. Not bad, but not particularly engaging. Really, this story would have probably been more interesting if there weren't already a bunch of similar Bond novels and films out there, even by 1968.
Perhaps the best part of this book was a glimpse into the Cold War at the time. It's interesting how it was perceived then, when you look back at how the world has changed so much over the years since.
The plot is somewhat uninspired. Not bad, just typical Bond and nothing too intriguing in the story. Not bad and not a waste of time, though with the audio I did find my mind wandering on occasion. The villain, Colonel Sun, is fairly typical for an old-school Bond villain, but he's kinda cool. He has a couple of sidekick sultry gorgeous women and an interesting torture technique that made things a little interesting.
The Bond girl, Ariadne, was pretty good, but not a lot to write home about either as far as uniqueness.
The reader on the audio was kinda blah. Not horrible, but some of his accents and voices were annoying.
This was written in 1968, as the first of the non-Fleming novels published after his death. Not bad, but not particularly engaging. Really, this story would have probably been more interesting if there weren't already a bunch of similar Bond novels and films out there, even by 1968.
Perhaps the best part of this book was a glimpse into the Cold War at the time. It's interesting how it was perceived then, when you look back at how the world has changed so much over the years since.
January 8, 2019
I glad I read this version of Bond so as to compare with the other 'none Fleming' Bond books. Overall I found it an uninspiring plot, and only kept turning the page just to finish the book rather than through total enjoyment. Ever the optometrist I thought it might pick up some what, as I got deeper in to the story, it didn't.
I think I'll give James Bond a break . . . . .
I think I'll give James Bond a break . . . . .
Read
June 20, 2020Kingsley Amis' James Bond novel, picked up largely because it was a first edition, before he was even revealed as the author, at a price where that seemed like a bargain*. Also because during my Fleming phase many years back, the bit that impressed me the most was the finale of The Man With The Golden Gun, which I was subsequently told Amis had ghostwritten. Whether or not that's true, I have never checked, but certainly he refers back to it early on in the not remotely glamorous opening chapter where Bond plays a round of golf with Bill Tanner and worries about getting soft. Certainly the character's specificity, in this more mundane setting, comes within an ace of going full Partridge – the game is "to be followed in due time by a leisurely drive back to London (avoiding the M4), a light dinner alone in the flat". Entertaining as it might be to have a whole Bond novel in which the biggest confrontation consists of him becoming overbearing about driving routes at an awkward garden party, desperately trying to get a new series, I mean assignment, he soon finds himself guiltily glad to be back in action after M is kidnapped and Bond himself only barely escapes. Still, while the action and derring-do picks up, it remains for some time very much as you might expect a Kingsley Amis Bond novel to be – which is to say, disapproving. Not of Bond, of course, but of pretty much everything else. "In thirty years, he reflected, perhaps sooner, there would be one vast undifferentiated culture, one complex of super-highways, hot-dog stands and neon, interrupted only by the Atlantic, stretching from Los Angeles to Jerusalem; possibly, by then, as far as Calcutta". Which would be anathema to Bond, because if there's one thing he likes it's separating, classifying, analysing. His appraiser's eye categorises people, especially women and foreigners, just as surely as brands or buildings, and seldom very kindly; even when he does approve of something, it'll often be a backhanded compliment. A Greek ally, for instance, doesn't have the particular difficulties in pronouncing English, or later, the precise form of fidgeting, which Bond expects in Greek men. Again, even when they come as part of the prelude to a daring raid, Bond unable to contact base and allied with a sexy enemy, there remains something bathetically Partridge about these really odd but incredibly specific stereotypes. And as for the immortal phrase whereby he "made long love to her"...well. Indeed, the awfulness of all the sex scenes sent me off on another alternate version of the novel; the island of Vrakonisi is, alas, not in the right spot to serve as a stand-in for Hydra, but I still kept being tickled by the notion of Bond crossing paths with sixties Leonard Cohen and growing ever more sulky that this leftie Jew is getting laid more than he is.
Now, one should of course not conflate an author with their characters, and this could all be considered part of Bond's internal monologue, a ruthless anatomisation of a psychotically limited mindset. If only it weren't that when the point of view flips (which it does too easily sometimes), other characters go along with much the same world view. That sexy enemy agent, for instance (and no, her name isn't any innuendo that I could see, more's the pity, just the slightly heavy-handed Ariadne Alexandrou), who finds herself lusting for Bond's beauty even as she plans to betray him. And as for Colonel Sun himself... even when Bond isn't on the scene, he's "an oriental" or "a Chinese" except when one supporting character calls him something worse. His attitude to Britain in general and Bond in particular is a toxic cocktail of envious malice and unbounded sadism tinged with a sort of merciless admiration. His plan is ostensibly to enhance China's influence in the West and particularly Africa, but mainly to torture James Bond, as witness the fact that the former goal is now being achieved far more effectively and less showily by the Belt & Road Initiative. He is, even by Bond villain standards, especially dastardly and not remotely plausible.
All of which may make this sound like a horrible parody of the various reasons Bond books are still considered not quite nice. And yes, to some extent it is. But set against that, for all his many flaws as a person and intermittently as a writer, Amis was not without ability. In particular, there's one description of sunset over a harbour which is just gorgeous. The comedy with which he could be so expert is mostly absent here, or present only in its most sneering and least palatable form, but the tension and the use of landscape which made me so keen on that Golden Gun finale, the protagonist who's a trained killer but not the superman of the films, those are here. Bond is not entirely flat as a character; he has misgivings, as anyone in his position would, and then misgivings about the misgivings. That passage about hot dog stands which I quoted above is followed by one in which he nonetheless declares, if only internally, for the West as against communism, which he characterises as "a doubtfully, conditionally right and unconditionally, unchangeably wrong" – as good a summation as I've seen, even in times like this when what became of the West is showing itself in a particularly poor light. But despite all of that, he can still understand why Ariadne should have turned to communism, and not just because he's making excuses for someone he's fucking. When things are happening, it works.
As with so much, the reading experience is also inevitably tinted by happening during lockdown. If you buy the theory that much of Bond's initial success was as a way to sell out-of-reach luxury living to the masses...well, streaming aside, now we have even less to divert us than those frustrated fifties saps. Even when the meals are underwhelming or the drinks not to Bond's taste, this is a portrait of a world denied to us, all these fancy restaurants, flirtations and foreign journeys firmly out of reach for the duration and likely to be maimed simulacra even once they do return. Part of what put me off flying was that my first experience of the whole tiny bottles, shoes-off security theatre era came shortly after I'd watched a documentary which had pointed out how, in the early Bond films, even catching a regular flight was considered glamorous enough to merit a snatch of the Bond theme (it's noticeable here that the villain smuggle M out of the country on a normal 'plane, not a private jet or anything). And I stood there in my socks clutching my silly little sandwich bag and thought, you know what, fuck this. And soon everything will be like that, all tatty-masked mumbling and perspex screens. Given how shabby and dreary the recent films have been, I can't resist the urge to reach for a tenuous pun and call it the day the world turned Craig-low.
*Without a dustjacket, granted, but while that may mean it isn't quite so abstractly lucrative, it also means I don't have to own that hideous and not very Bond Dali pastiche dustjacket.
Now, one should of course not conflate an author with their characters, and this could all be considered part of Bond's internal monologue, a ruthless anatomisation of a psychotically limited mindset. If only it weren't that when the point of view flips (which it does too easily sometimes), other characters go along with much the same world view. That sexy enemy agent, for instance (and no, her name isn't any innuendo that I could see, more's the pity, just the slightly heavy-handed Ariadne Alexandrou), who finds herself lusting for Bond's beauty even as she plans to betray him. And as for Colonel Sun himself... even when Bond isn't on the scene, he's "an oriental" or "a Chinese" except when one supporting character calls him something worse. His attitude to Britain in general and Bond in particular is a toxic cocktail of envious malice and unbounded sadism tinged with a sort of merciless admiration. His plan is ostensibly to enhance China's influence in the West and particularly Africa, but mainly to torture James Bond, as witness the fact that the former goal is now being achieved far more effectively and less showily by the Belt & Road Initiative. He is, even by Bond villain standards, especially dastardly and not remotely plausible.
All of which may make this sound like a horrible parody of the various reasons Bond books are still considered not quite nice. And yes, to some extent it is. But set against that, for all his many flaws as a person and intermittently as a writer, Amis was not without ability. In particular, there's one description of sunset over a harbour which is just gorgeous. The comedy with which he could be so expert is mostly absent here, or present only in its most sneering and least palatable form, but the tension and the use of landscape which made me so keen on that Golden Gun finale, the protagonist who's a trained killer but not the superman of the films, those are here. Bond is not entirely flat as a character; he has misgivings, as anyone in his position would, and then misgivings about the misgivings. That passage about hot dog stands which I quoted above is followed by one in which he nonetheless declares, if only internally, for the West as against communism, which he characterises as "a doubtfully, conditionally right and unconditionally, unchangeably wrong" – as good a summation as I've seen, even in times like this when what became of the West is showing itself in a particularly poor light. But despite all of that, he can still understand why Ariadne should have turned to communism, and not just because he's making excuses for someone he's fucking. When things are happening, it works.
As with so much, the reading experience is also inevitably tinted by happening during lockdown. If you buy the theory that much of Bond's initial success was as a way to sell out-of-reach luxury living to the masses...well, streaming aside, now we have even less to divert us than those frustrated fifties saps. Even when the meals are underwhelming or the drinks not to Bond's taste, this is a portrait of a world denied to us, all these fancy restaurants, flirtations and foreign journeys firmly out of reach for the duration and likely to be maimed simulacra even once they do return. Part of what put me off flying was that my first experience of the whole tiny bottles, shoes-off security theatre era came shortly after I'd watched a documentary which had pointed out how, in the early Bond films, even catching a regular flight was considered glamorous enough to merit a snatch of the Bond theme (it's noticeable here that the villain smuggle M out of the country on a normal 'plane, not a private jet or anything). And I stood there in my socks clutching my silly little sandwich bag and thought, you know what, fuck this. And soon everything will be like that, all tatty-masked mumbling and perspex screens. Given how shabby and dreary the recent films have been, I can't resist the urge to reach for a tenuous pun and call it the day the world turned Craig-low.
*Without a dustjacket, granted, but while that may mean it isn't quite so abstractly lucrative, it also means I don't have to own that hideous and not very Bond Dali pastiche dustjacket.
Want to read
January 14, 2021Synopsis: the first Bond after the passing of Ian Fleming. M is kidnapped and Bond finds all he can handle with Colonel Sun Liang-tan in Greece.
October 23, 2009
How can we possibly go wrong when Kingsley Amis takes his best crack at writing his own 007 story? The Kinger's rendition fits ably into the Fleming canon. To answer your other question, no, I have no intention of moving along to read any of the other continuation novels, none of which were written by Amis, and none of which garnered his approval. There was a long silence between the publication of Colonel Sun in 1968 and License Renewed by John Gardner in 1981. If Amis' rejection of Gardner's books is not enough to persuade you to avoid them, consider Philip Larkin's concurrence. Their unanimous condemnation of Gardner's Bond books as "sodding tame" ought to keep you from them forever.
There is a lot of fun here for fans of both Bond and of Amis, and for you weirdos who enjoy both this will be indispensable reading. I doubt anyone could have been as well prepared as KA for the task of taking up the mantle so recently laid down by the dead Fleming in the late '60's. Since Amis was fresh off several successes with his own "serious" novels as well as two books covering the Bond phenomenon, the project was a natural. Even as Fleming was expiring, the firm he had established for the promotion and protection of all things Bond was laying plans for continuation novels to be published under the collective pseudonym Robert Markham, to be written under by rotating authors. Ultimately, and for reasons which remain unclear, neither Amis nor anyone else was ever enlisted to be Markham again. Glidrose still handles all of the rights and distribution for the James Bond brand. A final weird note along these lines: in 2008, to celebrate Fleming's centenary, a new continuation novel was published by Sebastian Faulks writing "as Ian Fleming" (whatever that means.) Throughout the promotional coverage of the novel, titled Devil May Care, it was implied that no new Bond book had appeared since Fleming's own final book in 1966. I understand the publishers' desire to ignore the Gardner books as well as those of several other thriller hacks who succeeded him, but to call Faulks' book the first new Bond in a while was a stretch of the public imagination to challenge the schemes of Hugo Drax. Post-Fleming iterations of Bond have been published by no less than five different writers. What they likely meant was that Faulks' story was the first since Fleming's death to feature Bond resuming his "normal" '60's timeline, and such a claim would be far closer to the truth. However, it still blatantly ignores Colonel Sun. In the first chapter, Amis makes it clear that this is the same James who only a year ago faced off with Scaramanga in the Jamaican jungle to get his spurs back from M, the same Bond who is now rotting slightly from the soft London life and craving a new assignment. When M is kidnapped while invaliding at home, it's Bond to the rescue.
One and done was the right amount of 007 novels for Amis. He obviously had a lot of other great books to write around the time he finished Sun. An amusing fact for Nashvillians: Sun was composed mainly during Amis' brief tenure as a writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
There is a lot of fun here for fans of both Bond and of Amis, and for you weirdos who enjoy both this will be indispensable reading. I doubt anyone could have been as well prepared as KA for the task of taking up the mantle so recently laid down by the dead Fleming in the late '60's. Since Amis was fresh off several successes with his own "serious" novels as well as two books covering the Bond phenomenon, the project was a natural. Even as Fleming was expiring, the firm he had established for the promotion and protection of all things Bond was laying plans for continuation novels to be published under the collective pseudonym Robert Markham, to be written under by rotating authors. Ultimately, and for reasons which remain unclear, neither Amis nor anyone else was ever enlisted to be Markham again. Glidrose still handles all of the rights and distribution for the James Bond brand. A final weird note along these lines: in 2008, to celebrate Fleming's centenary, a new continuation novel was published by Sebastian Faulks writing "as Ian Fleming" (whatever that means.) Throughout the promotional coverage of the novel, titled Devil May Care, it was implied that no new Bond book had appeared since Fleming's own final book in 1966. I understand the publishers' desire to ignore the Gardner books as well as those of several other thriller hacks who succeeded him, but to call Faulks' book the first new Bond in a while was a stretch of the public imagination to challenge the schemes of Hugo Drax. Post-Fleming iterations of Bond have been published by no less than five different writers. What they likely meant was that Faulks' story was the first since Fleming's death to feature Bond resuming his "normal" '60's timeline, and such a claim would be far closer to the truth. However, it still blatantly ignores Colonel Sun. In the first chapter, Amis makes it clear that this is the same James who only a year ago faced off with Scaramanga in the Jamaican jungle to get his spurs back from M, the same Bond who is now rotting slightly from the soft London life and craving a new assignment. When M is kidnapped while invaliding at home, it's Bond to the rescue.
One and done was the right amount of 007 novels for Amis. He obviously had a lot of other great books to write around the time he finished Sun. An amusing fact for Nashvillians: Sun was composed mainly during Amis' brief tenure as a writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
July 25, 2019
Fleming approved of Robert Markham's 007 companion book and the Fleming Estate tabbed him to author the first Bond story after Fleming's death. By the time this story came around, it was 1968 - 4 years after Fleming's death - and it would be another 13 years until the character was written about again (not counting film novelizations).
Colonel Sun has impacted the Bond series in a few ways - the antagonist of "Die Another Day" derives some of his name from this antagonist, an M kidnapping plot makes its way into "The World is Not Enough" and very exact lines of dialogue emerge from Blofeld's mouth in 2 scenes of "SPECTRE."
This book starts with golf with Bill Tanner, Bond's penchant for the good life and drinks and reference to some of his most recent adventures ("The Man with the Golden Gun" and "James Bond In New York" where Fleming left off). It takes us swiftly into the action, Bond finds some unlikely allies, and while it does not often feel exactly like Fleming's Bond, it is a worthy entry.
Fleming spent most of his time detailing every aspect of the scene. Markham does that to a degree, but tells much more story as well with a much more intricate, complex plot. M isn't just kidnapped; there is a whole elaborate plot behind it that ties to another elaborate plot that ties to the politics of multiple nations.
"Colonel Sun" is a must-read for Bond fans and a worthy successor to the Fleming stories. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Colonel Sun has impacted the Bond series in a few ways - the antagonist of "Die Another Day" derives some of his name from this antagonist, an M kidnapping plot makes its way into "The World is Not Enough" and very exact lines of dialogue emerge from Blofeld's mouth in 2 scenes of "SPECTRE."
This book starts with golf with Bill Tanner, Bond's penchant for the good life and drinks and reference to some of his most recent adventures ("The Man with the Golden Gun" and "James Bond In New York" where Fleming left off). It takes us swiftly into the action, Bond finds some unlikely allies, and while it does not often feel exactly like Fleming's Bond, it is a worthy entry.
Fleming spent most of his time detailing every aspect of the scene. Markham does that to a degree, but tells much more story as well with a much more intricate, complex plot. M isn't just kidnapped; there is a whole elaborate plot behind it that ties to another elaborate plot that ties to the politics of multiple nations.
"Colonel Sun" is a must-read for Bond fans and a worthy successor to the Fleming stories. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
March 10, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in July 1998.
I don't think that the existence of this book is terribly well-known. It's a James Bond book written in the late sixties, and is not by either Ian Fleming or John Gardner, who was licensed to continue the series by the Fleming estate. In fact, Robert Markham is a pseudonym used by Kingsley Amis, of all people, a big fan of Ian Fleming.
Bond goes to meet M at his home in Surrey, and is surprised there by a gang of thugs who have kidnapped M and want to take James as well. Escaping from them with a superhuman effort, he returns later to find clues pointing to Athens. Knowing these to have been planted by his attackers, Bond decides he has to put his head into the trap in order to be able to save M from them.
The kidnapping is part of a complex Chinese plot to sabotage a conference of Middle Eastern countries taking place on a remote Greek island; the conference is run by Russians without the knowledge of the Greek government. The idea is to attack the conference with British-made weapons and then leave the bodies of Bond and M to make it look like a British attack, causing a loss of esteem for British interests and embarrassment for the Russians.
The book is exciting, and Amis-as-Markham has rather more of a sense of humour than Fleming. I would say its standard is at least on a par with the majority of Fleming's own novels, and better than the worst of them (such as The Spy Who Loved Me). The tension drops a little bit in the middle, which describes what is basically a short cruise in the Aegean, perhaps more exotic to readers in 1968.
In the end, I felt the book reminded me rather more strongly of Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise series than the Fleming Bond books. There is a slight tendency towards "pornography of violence" in that series and here; there is an extremely unpleasant torture sequence conducted by the half-mad Chinese Colonel Sun on Bond to test the theory of the Marquis de Sade that torturing another human being would make him feel like a god. (He later admits that it made him feel evil and ashamed, which is perhaps better than expected from this genre of fiction.)
I don't think that the existence of this book is terribly well-known. It's a James Bond book written in the late sixties, and is not by either Ian Fleming or John Gardner, who was licensed to continue the series by the Fleming estate. In fact, Robert Markham is a pseudonym used by Kingsley Amis, of all people, a big fan of Ian Fleming.
Bond goes to meet M at his home in Surrey, and is surprised there by a gang of thugs who have kidnapped M and want to take James as well. Escaping from them with a superhuman effort, he returns later to find clues pointing to Athens. Knowing these to have been planted by his attackers, Bond decides he has to put his head into the trap in order to be able to save M from them.
The kidnapping is part of a complex Chinese plot to sabotage a conference of Middle Eastern countries taking place on a remote Greek island; the conference is run by Russians without the knowledge of the Greek government. The idea is to attack the conference with British-made weapons and then leave the bodies of Bond and M to make it look like a British attack, causing a loss of esteem for British interests and embarrassment for the Russians.
The book is exciting, and Amis-as-Markham has rather more of a sense of humour than Fleming. I would say its standard is at least on a par with the majority of Fleming's own novels, and better than the worst of them (such as The Spy Who Loved Me). The tension drops a little bit in the middle, which describes what is basically a short cruise in the Aegean, perhaps more exotic to readers in 1968.
In the end, I felt the book reminded me rather more strongly of Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise series than the Fleming Bond books. There is a slight tendency towards "pornography of violence" in that series and here; there is an extremely unpleasant torture sequence conducted by the half-mad Chinese Colonel Sun on Bond to test the theory of the Marquis de Sade that torturing another human being would make him feel like a god. (He later admits that it made him feel evil and ashamed, which is perhaps better than expected from this genre of fiction.)
September 17, 2018
With the death of Ian Fleming the creator of the James Bond novels and the great succes of the first three Sean Connery 007 movies there as a great thirst for more James Bond stories and the inheritors of Flemings legacy came up with the plan to ask great writers to write new books and they would all be known by the writers nam Robert Markham. In this first book of a planned new series we find the writer Kingsley Amis who took up this cloak.
This story is about the kidnapping of M and the attempt to kidnap 007 as well. Which does fail as our secret agent man does have certain skills that kept him alive for so long. However the kidnappers still have plans and leave breadcrumbs for 007 and his secret service to follow. It leads Bond to Athens where he finds himslef in a strange alliance with the GRU ( A Russian secret service) to stop a Chinese secret agent form fulfilling his plan to bloody the nose of the Russians and leave the British with the smoking gun.
The story has it all blood, sex, women and sadism, true to Flemings formula and the books works really well.
However rereading it in this new print, somebody nicked my original Hardcover with Dali painting on the front, I found myself less enthralled with this book than I had previously done. This novel has the one advantage of a writer writing in Bonds own continued universe and time. And yet the book feels more like an hommage or look at me doing a Fleming novel. Too much by the numbers and the adventure is just not as exciting as Fleming wrote. I prefer even Flemings last, arguable unfinished The man with the Golden gun" over this novel. This books lacks something special, it feels average most of the time. After the kidnap attempt which is exciting the book never attains that level of excitement again. Which is bad news for a thriller when the beginning is great and then is only becomes less.
In a sense that is the problem with quite a few continuation novels and the various writers that continued the 007 series all found themselves in the same pit sooner or later.
Anyhow in these 007-less years it nice that we get a new representation of a classic Bond novel that was unobtainable for so many years, unless you paid too much money for it.
For James Bond literary fans a must to read, for the rest just a bit of fun that never seems to be as good as the originals by the Fleming.
This story is about the kidnapping of M and the attempt to kidnap 007 as well. Which does fail as our secret agent man does have certain skills that kept him alive for so long. However the kidnappers still have plans and leave breadcrumbs for 007 and his secret service to follow. It leads Bond to Athens where he finds himslef in a strange alliance with the GRU ( A Russian secret service) to stop a Chinese secret agent form fulfilling his plan to bloody the nose of the Russians and leave the British with the smoking gun.
The story has it all blood, sex, women and sadism, true to Flemings formula and the books works really well.
However rereading it in this new print, somebody nicked my original Hardcover with Dali painting on the front, I found myself less enthralled with this book than I had previously done. This novel has the one advantage of a writer writing in Bonds own continued universe and time. And yet the book feels more like an hommage or look at me doing a Fleming novel. Too much by the numbers and the adventure is just not as exciting as Fleming wrote. I prefer even Flemings last, arguable unfinished The man with the Golden gun" over this novel. This books lacks something special, it feels average most of the time. After the kidnap attempt which is exciting the book never attains that level of excitement again. Which is bad news for a thriller when the beginning is great and then is only becomes less.
In a sense that is the problem with quite a few continuation novels and the various writers that continued the 007 series all found themselves in the same pit sooner or later.
Anyhow in these 007-less years it nice that we get a new representation of a classic Bond novel that was unobtainable for so many years, unless you paid too much money for it.
For James Bond literary fans a must to read, for the rest just a bit of fun that never seems to be as good as the originals by the Fleming.
February 27, 2011
How though does Colonel Sun stand up to Fleming, and does it deserve its place in the Bond canon? The answers to these questions are, "very well", and "certainly."
The book starts off in gentle fashion, with Bond reflecting on his life while he plays a round of golf with Bill Tanner - we discover that the story takes place the year after the events in, The Man with the Golden Gun. Bond has fully recovered from the bullet Scaramanga put into his abdomen.
However this quiet reflective period is simply the lull before the story because no sooner is this section over than we are at Quarterdeck, where we witness the kidnapping of M - a terrific sequence in which Bond narrowly escapes with his life. I wrote a detailed review here - http://tainted-archive.blogspot.com/2...
The book starts off in gentle fashion, with Bond reflecting on his life while he plays a round of golf with Bill Tanner - we discover that the story takes place the year after the events in, The Man with the Golden Gun. Bond has fully recovered from the bullet Scaramanga put into his abdomen.
However this quiet reflective period is simply the lull before the story because no sooner is this section over than we are at Quarterdeck, where we witness the kidnapping of M - a terrific sequence in which Bond narrowly escapes with his life. I wrote a detailed review here - http://tainted-archive.blogspot.com/2...
January 23, 2018
One I have been trying to get to read for so long. A good read, wide ranging action and in the Fleming style.
The torture scene at the end was used so closely in the movie Spectre.
The torture scene at the end was used so closely in the movie Spectre.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 6, 2021
The first James Bond novel written after the death of Ian Fleming was ghost written by Kingsley Amis (using a Pseudonym, because apparently Booker Prize winners don’t write spy novels.)
It’s not bad. The writing is actually pretty good. The story is okay and the settings are fine.
Something seems a bit off. The plot seems too fussy. The bad guy is both diabolical and sloppy. Except for a mention of golfing, there’s no gaming or gambling. There’s no scuba diving (despite plenty of Aegean waters).
There’s still plenty of pro-Western jingoism and casual racism. Amis even work a homophobic comment or two because one of the Soviets just has to be terrible and gay.
Apparently it didn’t take off, because they didn’t write any more original Bond novels until the 80s. John Gardner did a better job capturing the Bond brand, imho.
Recommended to Bond fans only. Everyone else, read “Thunderball” or “From Russia with Love” instead.
It’s not bad. The writing is actually pretty good. The story is okay and the settings are fine.
Something seems a bit off. The plot seems too fussy. The bad guy is both diabolical and sloppy. Except for a mention of golfing, there’s no gaming or gambling. There’s no scuba diving (despite plenty of Aegean waters).
There’s still plenty of pro-Western jingoism and casual racism. Amis even work a homophobic comment or two because one of the Soviets just has to be terrible and gay.
Apparently it didn’t take off, because they didn’t write any more original Bond novels until the 80s. John Gardner did a better job capturing the Bond brand, imho.
Recommended to Bond fans only. Everyone else, read “Thunderball” or “From Russia with Love” instead.
June 25, 2019
This review originally appeared on The Reel Bits as part of the 007 Case Files series.
Ian Fleming was dead: to begin with. There was no doubt about that. Yet his most famous creation has survived him by over half a century in film and print. COLONEL SUN was the first chapter in that renewed legacy. It could have easily been the last.
The 1968 release came at a time of transition for 007. Sean Connery had tired of playing the role on screen, and the hunt was on for a new James Bond. After Gildrose Productions (now Ian Fleming Productions) was turned down by author James Leasor (The Sea Wolves), this first official continuation was written by Kinglsey Amis under the pseudonym Robert Markham. In fact, the plan was to release a series of new Bond books under the Markham moniker. History had other plans.
In a retrospective review, The Guardian ’s John Dugdale labelled this the “weirdest of all” Bond books, and he’s not wrong. While Amis seemed like an obvious choice for a successor to Fleming – having published both a critical analysis of Bond (The James Bond Dossier) and a satirical manual for potential agents (The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007) in 1965 – the Lucky Jim author’s style didn’t immediately gel with audience expectations.
The loosely plotted COLONEL SUN sees M kidnapped by enemy forces, ones who very nearly take out 007 in the process. Following his narrow escape, he chases the trail to the Aegean Islands where Bond uncovers a connection to the nefarious plans of Colonel Sun of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
The Chinese connection is an interesting turning point for a series that had a binary view of global politics. Fleming was gradually drifting away from the Soviets as villains in favour of the stateless SPECTRE, and here Bond works with the Russians to fight this new threat. Yet Amis creates a Colonel Sun who may not quite match Fleming’s greatest villains for megalomania, but still manages to echo the writer’s casual racism. Indeed, Sun is frequently referred to as just “the Chinese.” It’s perhaps reflective of Amis’ own transition from an active Communist member to embracing the opposite end of the spectrum, something he wrote about only a year earlier in the essay “Why Lucky Jim Turned Right.”
After drifting through exotic locales and obligatory Bond girls, one of the book’s more memorable moments comes in Chapter 19, simply titled “The Theory and Practice of Torture.”
It’s a mean-spirited affair that recalls Casino Royale’s infamous torture sequence, although Sun perhaps pointedly refers to “a genital assault” as “so…unsophisticated.” Yet given Sun’s stated aim of nothing more than sadistic torture, and the physical ordeal he puts M through in a similar moment, it’s hard to draw too close a line between this and classic Bond. Indeed, the assault involves a further denigration of Bond and another woman when the Colonel forces the latter to strip for the tortured agent and “caress him very lasciviously.” Amis compounds this sexualised violence only pages later when the aftermath of “Some sort of rape-cum-orgy” is discovered.
Which is unsurprising in a book where Amis doesn’t seem to take any other pleasure in the characters. It begins with a golf game, and Bond ponders whether he’s “going soft.” Referring to Fleming’s past adventures, and directly to the events of You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond/Amis reflects: “It was certainly a far more sensible and grown-up routine than the round of gin and tranquillizers he had been trapped in only a couple of years back.” Even so, the thought of becoming a businessman is “repugnant” to the secret agent. You’re so boho, Bond.
Amis doesn’t seem sure which is the better option though. When he isn’t running M down, he’s taking potshots at the women. When the sexy agent Ariadne comes on a little too strong, Bond’s internal monologue uncharacteristically rejects the idea: “God! Bond’s gorge rose at the vulgarity of it, the confident obviousness.” Yet Bond, like Amis, seems resigned to the conventions of the form. After he “fought down his disgust” he concedes: “Of course. I don’t seem to have any alternative.”
While the novel sold well, it didn’t immediately result in more Markham books. Indeed, Amis’ plans ranged from the final death of Bond in a Mexican adventure, to a rumour of a story about an aged 007 coming out of retirement for one final adventure. Gildrose didn’t give permission to the latter. Nevertheless, elements of COLONEL SUN continue to inform Bond’s legacy, from M’s kidnapping in The World Is Not Enough (1999) to an almost identical (and much complained about) torture sequence in Spectre (2015). Otherwise, this remains a strange little bubble in the history of James Bond.
James Bond will return…in James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007 .
Ian Fleming was dead: to begin with. There was no doubt about that. Yet his most famous creation has survived him by over half a century in film and print. COLONEL SUN was the first chapter in that renewed legacy. It could have easily been the last.
The 1968 release came at a time of transition for 007. Sean Connery had tired of playing the role on screen, and the hunt was on for a new James Bond. After Gildrose Productions (now Ian Fleming Productions) was turned down by author James Leasor (The Sea Wolves), this first official continuation was written by Kinglsey Amis under the pseudonym Robert Markham. In fact, the plan was to release a series of new Bond books under the Markham moniker. History had other plans.
In a retrospective review, The Guardian ’s John Dugdale labelled this the “weirdest of all” Bond books, and he’s not wrong. While Amis seemed like an obvious choice for a successor to Fleming – having published both a critical analysis of Bond (The James Bond Dossier) and a satirical manual for potential agents (The Book of Bond, or Every Man His Own 007) in 1965 – the Lucky Jim author’s style didn’t immediately gel with audience expectations.
The loosely plotted COLONEL SUN sees M kidnapped by enemy forces, ones who very nearly take out 007 in the process. Following his narrow escape, he chases the trail to the Aegean Islands where Bond uncovers a connection to the nefarious plans of Colonel Sun of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
The Chinese connection is an interesting turning point for a series that had a binary view of global politics. Fleming was gradually drifting away from the Soviets as villains in favour of the stateless SPECTRE, and here Bond works with the Russians to fight this new threat. Yet Amis creates a Colonel Sun who may not quite match Fleming’s greatest villains for megalomania, but still manages to echo the writer’s casual racism. Indeed, Sun is frequently referred to as just “the Chinese.” It’s perhaps reflective of Amis’ own transition from an active Communist member to embracing the opposite end of the spectrum, something he wrote about only a year earlier in the essay “Why Lucky Jim Turned Right.”
After drifting through exotic locales and obligatory Bond girls, one of the book’s more memorable moments comes in Chapter 19, simply titled “The Theory and Practice of Torture.”
“It came without warning, the first dazzling concussion of agony, as instantaneously violent as the discharge of a gun. He heard himself whimper faintly…After that, pain in bursts and thrusts and sheets and floods, drenching and blazing pain, pain as inexhaustible as the sea or the sands of the desert.”
It’s a mean-spirited affair that recalls Casino Royale’s infamous torture sequence, although Sun perhaps pointedly refers to “a genital assault” as “so…unsophisticated.” Yet given Sun’s stated aim of nothing more than sadistic torture, and the physical ordeal he puts M through in a similar moment, it’s hard to draw too close a line between this and classic Bond. Indeed, the assault involves a further denigration of Bond and another woman when the Colonel forces the latter to strip for the tortured agent and “caress him very lasciviously.” Amis compounds this sexualised violence only pages later when the aftermath of “Some sort of rape-cum-orgy” is discovered.
Which is unsurprising in a book where Amis doesn’t seem to take any other pleasure in the characters. It begins with a golf game, and Bond ponders whether he’s “going soft.” Referring to Fleming’s past adventures, and directly to the events of You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond/Amis reflects: “It was certainly a far more sensible and grown-up routine than the round of gin and tranquillizers he had been trapped in only a couple of years back.” Even so, the thought of becoming a businessman is “repugnant” to the secret agent. You’re so boho, Bond.
Amis doesn’t seem sure which is the better option though. When he isn’t running M down, he’s taking potshots at the women. When the sexy agent Ariadne comes on a little too strong, Bond’s internal monologue uncharacteristically rejects the idea: “God! Bond’s gorge rose at the vulgarity of it, the confident obviousness.” Yet Bond, like Amis, seems resigned to the conventions of the form. After he “fought down his disgust” he concedes: “Of course. I don’t seem to have any alternative.”
While the novel sold well, it didn’t immediately result in more Markham books. Indeed, Amis’ plans ranged from the final death of Bond in a Mexican adventure, to a rumour of a story about an aged 007 coming out of retirement for one final adventure. Gildrose didn’t give permission to the latter. Nevertheless, elements of COLONEL SUN continue to inform Bond’s legacy, from M’s kidnapping in The World Is Not Enough (1999) to an almost identical (and much complained about) torture sequence in Spectre (2015). Otherwise, this remains a strange little bubble in the history of James Bond.
James Bond will return…in James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007 .
December 19, 2022
One of my favourite continuation Bond novels.
Amis really goes back to basics in this novel, small island, small plot, no gadgets and a Bond that’s brutal, knackered and out for revenge.
This story ticks all the boxes of a good James Bond story whilst still feeling fresh and unique with the first ever new narrative voice for Bond after Fleming’s death.
The Greek setting, the villain that inspired scenes in Spectre and Die Another Day, the plot that inspired elements of The World is not Enough. It’s an influential and impressive work of Bond fiction.
Recommended?: if you’ve never read any of the original continuation novels this is definitely the place to start. Not only is it one of the first continuation stories but it’s also one of the best.
Amis really goes back to basics in this novel, small island, small plot, no gadgets and a Bond that’s brutal, knackered and out for revenge.
This story ticks all the boxes of a good James Bond story whilst still feeling fresh and unique with the first ever new narrative voice for Bond after Fleming’s death.
The Greek setting, the villain that inspired scenes in Spectre and Die Another Day, the plot that inspired elements of The World is not Enough. It’s an influential and impressive work of Bond fiction.
Recommended?: if you’ve never read any of the original continuation novels this is definitely the place to start. Not only is it one of the first continuation stories but it’s also one of the best.
June 14, 2016
I'm a huge fan of the James Bond franchise, anyone who has read this blog will know that. It's one of my goals to eventually do a review of all of the movies up until Spectre. I'm not just a fan of the movies, though, but also the books. Well, sort of. I equivocate there because the novels have a wonderful panache to them which directly led to the films and a deep brooding atmosphere. They're also err, really racist at times.
Ian Fleming gets some defense for being a "man of his time" (and quite progressive in some places--real life people aren't cutouts) but it can be disconcerting to read things like his description of Koreans. It's also something which reflects on me as the reader rather than Fleming himself. I have read the novels for both their history as well as their fandom value but for pure entertainment, they suffer because of values dissonance. Fleming's writing is also dramatically divergent in terms of style depending on which book you read. Moonraker is a silly-silly novel but fun while From Russia with Love is amazing and Goldfinger is probably the best but for the aforementioned description of Koreans.
Which brings me to Robert Markham (a.k.a Kingsley Amis). When Ian Fleming died, his publishers wished to continue producing Bond novels. I'm not sure of the exact copyright issues but they commissioned a new novel which would secure their control of the literary portion of the franchise for decades to come. Crass commercial move or not, they chose someone who had a genuine love of the franchise as well as tremendous skill.
Ian's widow, Ana, was less than pleased with their choice of author. Kingsley Amis was a huge Bond fan, no one could doubt it, with a number of books written on the franchise. No, the problem Ana Fleming had with him was his politics. Err, not to put too fine a point on it, but Kingsley Amis was a communist. This is rather noticeable as the literary Bond was all about murdering SMERSH before he ever heard of SPECTRE. Either way, Kingsley Amis typed out a book which I think is probably one of the best Bond books.
But is still kinda racist.
The premise for the novel is the demented Colonel Sun, a Maoist Chinese operative with a pain obsession (because literary Bond villains are crazy like that), has kidnapped M. This is part of a larger plan to sew discord between the West and Soviet Union in order to benefit Red China. The book was written in 1968 so it was still four years before Richard Nixon went to China and utterly upended how everyone assumed the Cold War was going to.
Kingsley Amis' politics are on full display here, much as Ana feared, but are more amusing in retrospect than offensive. Kingsley has Bond willing to team up with the Soviets against the Red Chinese because the author clearly believes the Maoists will be the enemy in the future. You know, instead of America and China becoming friendly rivals while the USSR's relationship sours even further.
In any case, Bond isn't going to let M's kidnapping slide so he heads off to Greece and hooks up with GRU operative Ariadne Alexandroi in order to stop Colonel Sun's nefarious plan. They visit some beautiful locations, have a romance, and get involved with some ex-WW2 resistance fighters who are less than pleased by Ariadne's communist sympathies. It's all extremely entertaining but the book is quite short at a mere 224 pages.
Ariadne is probably one of my favorite Bond girls and quite entertaining. Part of what makes her so appealing is the ash-blonde Greek is portrayed as a very well-rounded character. She's politically naive both in-story and out, believing in communism but clearly underestimating her superiors' darker side (one is actually a pedophile). She's also both a patriot as well as someone working for a foreign government. Lots of interesting contradictions which make her a character I would have liked to have seen more of.
Colonel Sun is an inscrutable oriental Yellow Peril villain who is basically military Fu Manchu. He's not the kind of character who could fly in today's climate and probably just barely worked in the 1960s. The best moment of the character is when he breaks down and admits he thought being a monster would make him feel stronger but instead just made him feel vile. It's a bit of humanization which Fleming never afforded his villains even if Bond isn't the kind of guy interested in showing mercy to his foes.
Greece is a perfect location for a Bond novel with the oceans, ruins, and local culture all being lovingly detailed. It comes alive off the page and I can't think of many places I've "visited" in books which have been as realistic. The fact it feels so authentic with just a comparatively small page count is also to the author's credit.
I've read Colonel Sun, listened to it on audiobook, and purchased the B&W comic book version so I must like it a great deal. Even so, I admit the book has flaws and can't help but suspect some readers might prefer the later movie-influenced pastiches to this one. Still, I'm going to give this a recommendation for all fans of spy fiction as well as the literary Bond.
9.5/10
Ian Fleming gets some defense for being a "man of his time" (and quite progressive in some places--real life people aren't cutouts) but it can be disconcerting to read things like his description of Koreans. It's also something which reflects on me as the reader rather than Fleming himself. I have read the novels for both their history as well as their fandom value but for pure entertainment, they suffer because of values dissonance. Fleming's writing is also dramatically divergent in terms of style depending on which book you read. Moonraker is a silly-silly novel but fun while From Russia with Love is amazing and Goldfinger is probably the best but for the aforementioned description of Koreans.
Which brings me to Robert Markham (a.k.a Kingsley Amis). When Ian Fleming died, his publishers wished to continue producing Bond novels. I'm not sure of the exact copyright issues but they commissioned a new novel which would secure their control of the literary portion of the franchise for decades to come. Crass commercial move or not, they chose someone who had a genuine love of the franchise as well as tremendous skill.
Ian's widow, Ana, was less than pleased with their choice of author. Kingsley Amis was a huge Bond fan, no one could doubt it, with a number of books written on the franchise. No, the problem Ana Fleming had with him was his politics. Err, not to put too fine a point on it, but Kingsley Amis was a communist. This is rather noticeable as the literary Bond was all about murdering SMERSH before he ever heard of SPECTRE. Either way, Kingsley Amis typed out a book which I think is probably one of the best Bond books.
But is still kinda racist.
The premise for the novel is the demented Colonel Sun, a Maoist Chinese operative with a pain obsession (because literary Bond villains are crazy like that), has kidnapped M. This is part of a larger plan to sew discord between the West and Soviet Union in order to benefit Red China. The book was written in 1968 so it was still four years before Richard Nixon went to China and utterly upended how everyone assumed the Cold War was going to.
Kingsley Amis' politics are on full display here, much as Ana feared, but are more amusing in retrospect than offensive. Kingsley has Bond willing to team up with the Soviets against the Red Chinese because the author clearly believes the Maoists will be the enemy in the future. You know, instead of America and China becoming friendly rivals while the USSR's relationship sours even further.
In any case, Bond isn't going to let M's kidnapping slide so he heads off to Greece and hooks up with GRU operative Ariadne Alexandroi in order to stop Colonel Sun's nefarious plan. They visit some beautiful locations, have a romance, and get involved with some ex-WW2 resistance fighters who are less than pleased by Ariadne's communist sympathies. It's all extremely entertaining but the book is quite short at a mere 224 pages.
Ariadne is probably one of my favorite Bond girls and quite entertaining. Part of what makes her so appealing is the ash-blonde Greek is portrayed as a very well-rounded character. She's politically naive both in-story and out, believing in communism but clearly underestimating her superiors' darker side (one is actually a pedophile). She's also both a patriot as well as someone working for a foreign government. Lots of interesting contradictions which make her a character I would have liked to have seen more of.
Colonel Sun is an inscrutable oriental Yellow Peril villain who is basically military Fu Manchu. He's not the kind of character who could fly in today's climate and probably just barely worked in the 1960s. The best moment of the character is when he breaks down and admits he thought being a monster would make him feel stronger but instead just made him feel vile. It's a bit of humanization which Fleming never afforded his villains even if Bond isn't the kind of guy interested in showing mercy to his foes.
Greece is a perfect location for a Bond novel with the oceans, ruins, and local culture all being lovingly detailed. It comes alive off the page and I can't think of many places I've "visited" in books which have been as realistic. The fact it feels so authentic with just a comparatively small page count is also to the author's credit.
I've read Colonel Sun, listened to it on audiobook, and purchased the B&W comic book version so I must like it a great deal. Even so, I admit the book has flaws and can't help but suspect some readers might prefer the later movie-influenced pastiches to this one. Still, I'm going to give this a recommendation for all fans of spy fiction as well as the literary Bond.
9.5/10
July 7, 2017
The first Bond novel not written by Fleming. Markham (Amis) rightly didn't try to do a Fleming pastiche, but stayed with what makes Bond unique and then told his own story. It's effective, ties right into the world at that time, and a worthy addition to the canon.
Buy it! Read it!
Buy it! Read it!
August 29, 2020
The first non-Fleming Bond and possibly the best. It feels authentic to Fleming's world and has a suitably unpleasant torture scene. It would have been nice if Kingsley Amis had written more. Very good.
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