Again, I was underwhelmed. It was pretty good but not what I was expecting still. Still waiting for the series to get better, but I think I’m gunna take a break from it for now. ( )

I miss the army in spacesuits visual and the zero gravity sex scene in my favorite worst bond movie ever, but all in all one of the better books. ( )

Bond plays bridge with Drax. And Bond doesn't get the girl in the end. ( )

It isn't that I feel these books need trigger-warnings, but Fleming was a man of his age, which is to say there is a certain amount of racism, sexism, and weird conflation of personal beauty and virtue, here. Further there are colonialist politics built-in with un-examined assumptions and language that skews toward a sham-Darwinist view of Anglo-superiority.

But. If you aren't put off completely by that, and ignore the ridiculous Roger Moore movie with which this literally shares only the name of a villain[1], this is quite good. The prose is pristine in its clarity and the descriptions are quite evocative. The characters are well-realized, and the plot rips along like the better Doyle Sherlock stories.

It is known, amongst fans of these sorts of things, that novel-Bond is not particularly similar to his movie-counterpart. But Bond here is even more of a romantic than in the other books, falling in love with an engaged woman and then backing out gracefully when he learns of her fiancé. It's all very sweet in a portrait-of-a-self-destructive-alcoholic sort of way.

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[1] Has a family ever done an author so wrong as the Brocollis did to Ian Fleming when they produced those Roger Moore films? I had never previously read this because I thought it had some stupid space-thing going on. Instead, Moonraker is the name of an ICBM that is integral to the plot. ( )

Maybe it because I didn't see the move to this one, but Moonraker is defiantly not one of my favorite Bond books. Sadly I found some of the parts in this one confusing and boring. I think it's because it was about missiles and space. Not only that the Bond Girl in the was very bland compared to the previous ones and the Bond Villain wasn't as good as the previous two. I do like the fact that this book does focus on M more and Bond's fancy tastes in cars. I also like how Fleming switched the chapter set up to three parts representing days of the week.

I'm glad the next 4 books that I own right now are titles to movies I actually remember and remember liking. So I can count on the next four books not to be as disappointing as this one. Moonraker wasn't bad, just a bit boring. ( )