On Her Majesty's Secret Service (James Bond Novels)
by Ian Fleming
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ian FlemingEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-09-02
ISBN: 0142003255
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (James Bond Novels)
Book Review: 007's First Reboot
Summary: 5 Stars
When the people behind the James Bond films reimagined 007 as a harder, sleeker, less charming fellow in 2006's "Casino Royale", it was billed as "Bond 2.0", never mind the formula behind Bond's success had been shaken not stirred a few times before then. This, Ian Fleming's tenth Bond novel published in 1963, was probably the most successful upgrade.
Bond starts out re-evaluting his future. Frustrated by his failure to ascertain the whereabouts of supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, he's contemplating turning in his license to kill while trying to figure out how to save someone's life for a change. This is a woman he's become atypically obsessed by, beautiful, yes, but suicidal, too. When the pair are taken against their will on a boat ride to meet a dangerous hood, Bond fingers his knife and realizes the game is up. But it's hardly begun, and when it's over, he will never be the same.
Fleming seems re-energized by something; whether it was the launch of the Bond movies while this was being written, a revisiting of the "love-is-pain" theme laid aside since "Casino Royale", or a sense that time was getting short and it was no good futzing around. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" does almost nothing you expect it to, and much of the pleasure I get from it is not in the reading but thinking about it afterwards.
Tracy, the woman Bond's chasing, is one of Fleming's most enigmatic characters, not a full-blooded person per se (women never were in Fleming's fiction), but a brilliant complement to the darker side of Bond's nature. When Bond asks for her secret after she beats him in a hairy car race, she tells him: "You want to stay alive."
The main story takes its time developing. In it, Blofeld is holed up in a Swiss mountain chalet, his great sick mind obsessing over two plots. The one Bond knows of is Blofeld's desire to be accepted as nobility. Bond plays to this delusion by posing as a genealogist charting Blofeld's bloodline. Since they didn't meet in Blofeld's earlier Bond novel, "Thunderball", this is not a problem.
What might be a problem for Bond's cover are the ten gorgeous girls staying with Blofeld for some unspecified reason. What might seem a set-up for a Dean Martin-Matt Helm film is instead played credibly and with much polish by Fleming, who really allows us to soak in the Alpine ambiance while deriving maximum suspense from such small things as a strip of plastic and a trip to the bathroom.
Though this is often described as "dark", the story moves along for the most part at a brisk and enjoyable manner. For once, Fleming doesn't seem at a loss for plot, even though his focus throughout the novel is on Bond. It's almost more of a character study than a spy novel, especially near the end, where the usual race to save the world is quickly sidetracked for more of Bond and Tracy. To some extent, this results in the only real quibble I have with the story, a big final battle scene that gets shunted aside and is never picked up again. But like I said, this is a different kind of Bond adventure.
Shame Fleming only had time for one complete novel after this, the really, really dark "You Only Live Twice". Bond was never the same after this, and his legacy is the richer for it.
Summary of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (James Bond Novels)
A Lancia Spyder with its hood down tore past him, cut in cheekily across his bonnet and pulled away, the sexy boom of its twin exhausts echoing back at him. It was a girl driving, a girl with a shocking pink scarf tied round her hair. And if there was one thing that set James Bond really moving, it was being passed at speed by a pretty girl.
When Bond rescues a beautiful, reckless girl from self-destruction, he finds himself with a lead on one of the most dangerous men in the world?Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. In the snow-bound fastness of his Alpine base, Blofeld is conducting research that could threaten the safety of the world. To thwart the evil genius, Bond must get himself and the vital information he has gathered out of the base and keep away from SPECTRE's agents.
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