Moonraker

Rating:
Summary: Bond enters the atomic era
Review: Fleming's third Bond novel is quite a good one. The pace is slower than the previous one, "Live and Let Die", but anyway faster than "Casino Royale" (and, like the latter, includes one excellent card-game scenario). It's amazing how the author takes us from 007 at his most domestic to the (then) most sci-fi adventure. The villain, Drax, may look as someone took from a nightmare but Fleming describes him in such detail -dialogue, appearence, mood, idiosincracies and the story of his life- that the character becomes completely "real" (even upsetting the reader as much as he upsets Bond in the book). Drax's speech (heard on the radio by 007) when Moonraker is about to get fired is simply the best monologue Fleming ever conceived or wrote. Superb, funny yet amazingly dangerous! And Gala Brand, the heroine, just not falls into Bond's arms like so many, leaving the secret agent reflecting alone about their different lives and showing us his vulnerability instead of the wrongly-assumed 007's eternal success with women. It's a pity the film version spoiled this title (actually, the title is the only resemblance to the novel), taking Bond to three countries and outer space while this excellent down-to-earth adventure story goes no farther than London and Dover. The rocket ready to blow Buckingham Palace is a more atractive and original idea by far. Bond save the Queen, indeed!

Rating:
Summary: The Roger Moore film does this Novel No Justice
Review: This novel is my first real Ian Fleming novel. It has an elaborate plot invloving a scheme to seek vengence for the defeat of Germany in WWII. Sir Hugo Drax is a British nobleman with a mysterious past and fortune. He offers the British a nuclear super-rocket: the Moonraker. Suddenly, an MI-5 agent is murdere by a German scientist in a murder/suicide. After Bond stops Drax in a card game at M's private club, M recommends Bond as MI-5's replacement. His trainig is for overseas operations, but he reports to Drax's compound. The leading lady is Gala Brand, from the Ministry of Supply, who Bond never seduces(surprise!). Bond and Gala uncover a plot to destroy London. Unlike the movie, Bond never leaves England. The one star is deducted since the card game is too long. Overall, a fantastic book.

Rating:
Summary: The Best of the First Three Bond Novels.
Review: I am reading (in some cases rereading) the Ian Fleming Bond books in chronological order. Moonraker is the third in the series. As opposed to the first two, this book delves into the life of the government secret agent. His everyday duties at work, and some of the personalities of those with whom he works. There is an emphasis on his chief "M" including M's real name (to my knowledge never spoken in the movies).

The point of the story builds slowly, but once exposed the mystery moves with the familiarity of a Bond novel. Again, the writer examines the human side of his character that is not seen in many other adventure novels. This story also differs from the others by having a stronger female character who uses her wits and determination (and not relying on her looks) to save Bond's life. Again, Fleming gives a diabolic antagonist, however, this one is particularly disgusting in his personal qualities. What is very believable, though, is how those who meet this character, including Bond, allow their objectivity to be lost due to social and economic status.

The book includes some of the more clever prose by Fleming thus far in the series such as, "Bond could hear a quick, deadly ticking, the hasty tripping of tiny metal feet somewhere in the body of the Moonraker. It filled the great steel chamber like the beating heart in Poe's story..."

Missing is the exotic setting common for a Bond story. Finally, for those who see the Bond character as the ultimate male chauvinist, the ending will come as a surprise.

Also recommended in this series are, Casino Royale, and Live and Let Die.

Rating:
Summary: Bond enters the atomic era
Review: Fleming's third Bond novel is quite a good one. The pace is slower than the previous one, "Live and Let Die", but anyway faster than "Casino Royale" (and, like the latter, includes one excellent card-game scenario). It's amazing how the author takes us from 007 at his most domestic to the (then) most sci-fi adventure. The villain, Drax, may look as someone took from a nightmare but Fleming describes him in such detail -dialogue, appearence, mood, idiosincracies and the story of his life- that the character becomes completely "real" (even upsetting the reader as much as he upsets Bond in the book). Drax's speech (heard on the radio by 007) when Moonraker is about to get fired is simply the best monologue Fleming ever conceived or wrote. Superb, funny yet amazingly dangerous! And Gala Brand, the heroine, just not falls into Bond's arms like so many, leaving the secret agent reflecting alone about their different lives and showing us his vulnerability instead of the wrongly-assumed 007's eternal success with women. It's a pity the film version spoiled this title (actually, the title is the only resemblance to the novel), taking Bond to three countries and outer space while this excellent down-to-earth adventure story goes no farther than London and Dover. The rocket ready to blow Buckingham Palace is a more atractive and original idea by far. Bond save the Queen, indeed!

Rating:
Summary: Kinder, Gentler Bond; Bigger, Badder Drax
Review: This is the third review I have done for a 007 novel and as always I will tell the reader that the book is nothing like the film. Forget the pseudo-science fiction of the movies (done to capitalize on the Star Wars craze) this book is a completely different animal.
Plot aside (Moonraker is a super ICBM capable of destroying London; not a space station) the biggest differences are in Bond and mastermind-of-the-hour Hugo Drax. Bond is, again, Fleming's human being as opposed to Hollywood's super-agent (He actually gets TURNED DOWN by his leading lady and you get the feeling he's ACTUALLY A LITTLE HURT). Drax is much more intense in this book, coming off as what today we would call the typical megalomaniacal(...)mastermind (but since Fleming was instrumental in defining such a character, this must be accepted as part of his vision for the 007 mythos).
Lastly, sorry Jaws fans: he's not in here -- but check out the Peter Lorre-like Krebs. He's a good villain too.
All in all, Moonraker was my favorite of the 007 novels thus far. And though the car chase was a more intense clone of the one in "Casino Royale" it did nothing to detract from the enjoyment of this book.

Rating:
Summary: A good Bond novel, but not one of the best.
Review: "Moonraker" (1955) was the third of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, and it is a good example of Fleming in fine form. A solid, suspenseful plot; an evil, over-the-top villain; M puffing away impatiently on his pipe; and Bond, ready for action and maybe a little love.

Sir Hugo Drax is a national hero in Britain, and is donating millions of his own pounds to create the Moonraker rocket, which can hit any city in Europe and, therefore, protect England from invasion by any enemy. But when M discovers that Drax cheats at cards, a plot is set into motion that will eventually lead to Bond uncovering the tycoon's true designs.

This is a perfectly respectable entry in the series, but does not attain the heights of, say, "Casino Royale" or "You Only Live Twice." There is less action than one might expect, and the suspense sometimes sags. But still, this is a solid thriller and I recommend it to anyone interested in the original Bond novels.

Rating:
Summary: Big Bad Bond
Review: A friend of mine told me after he started reading the James Bond novels, he would never go back to the movies. Though I will never turn my back on the films I grew up with and still love to go back to, I can understand his logic.

If you've a fan whos never read any of the James Bond novels, you need to. Bond of the films, while still a great character, comes off as a mere caricature of the man we meet as 007 in the books. Smart, grim, vulnerable (yes, VULNERABLE!), with far more depth than his on-screen counterpart, James Bond in the books wil change how you look at the famous secret agent.

Moonraker is the third Bond novel I have read, and while it is not my favorite (OHMSS is personally, the best), it is still a tremendously fun story written with slick language and beleivable characters (though the middle tends to be kind of slow). You can get more details from other reviewers, so I'll spare you the details. But yes, there is very little resembelance to the film of the same name.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed but Fun
Review: It should go without saying, but I'll mention it anyway, the book has zero relation to the film other than title. That established, the third 007 novel is the first of the series where the stakes are truly high (nuclear annihilation), however it's unlike virtually any other Bond story in that it takes place entirely in England (basically London and Dover). Like the CIA (in theory anyway...), the British Secret Service is not allowed to operate in its homeland, and thus Bond is seconded to the Special Branch in order to get him in the mix. But before this happens, the story begins with Bond being asked to do M a favor and try and determine if a popular industrialist is cheating at London's most exclusive private cards club. (By the way, an inside joke in the latest Bond flick is that the fencing club where Bond and the villain fight is given the same name -The Blades Club-as the card club from this novel.)

The industrialist Drax's heroic story is told through Bond's admiring mouth. His unconscious, and later amnesiac, body was recovered from an explosion site in Germany during the war (WWII) and eventually was determined to be an MIA British private named Hugo Drax. Over the subsequent decade he became a self-made international metals broker, notably through columbite (yes, it is a real mineral). He has recently returned to England and spent lavishly on charities, but more notably, on privately financing and building an ICBM capable of delivering an atomic warhead anywhere in Europe. The intriguing mystery is why such a popular patriot would stoop to cheating at cards, recalling that at the time of the writing some fifty years ago, as M puts it: "It's about the only way a man can ruin himself!" Most readers will, at this early stage, have already smelt a huge rat, and picked up on the the obvious clue Fleming not-so-subtly weaves in, and will have figured out what's really happening. This is the books major weakness, since from there on, one is waiting for Bond to catch up, and thus the villain's final monologue, in which All Is Revealed, is more than a little anticlimactic.

In any event, Bond's appearance at the club and a nerve-racking high-stakes bridge game against the fabulously wealthy Hugo Drax starts the ball rolling. It's a nice bit of tension-building, however those (like myself) who are unfamiliar with the game of bridge will probably not get as much out of it. Still, it's a nice set-piece, and also serves to remind one how puny Bond's salary is as a glorified civil servant when the stakes rise to ten times his annual salary! From here the book proceeds rather slowly, as a suspicious murder-suicide allows Bond to join the Moonraker missile team as security officer. He and a voluptuous undercover cop work to try and figure out what's so fishy about the whole project.

Make no mistake, the book is entirely predictable, the bad guys are either stereotypically insane or stereotypically robotic machines with zero depth to them. And perhaps weakest of all, Bond and the female cop are left to escape when throughout the whole story the villain has been ruthlessly precise about eliminating troublemakers. At the the time they're captured, there's no reason whatsoever for him not to simply shoot them in the head and leave them dead in a field. Even so, it's a decent page-turner that, with its lurking ogres of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction via atomic missile) and lurking Nazism, offers an interesting window to the past.

Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: I loved this book. Even though some parts of the book got dull I still loved the plot of it. To when he meets with Drax and his time a lone with Brand. It is a very great read especially if your alone on a rainy day this book is perfect for that ocassion and for many others.

Rating:
Summary: good but outdated
Review: This was a good read but it had nothing to do with the movie except for the name. Also, since it was written in the 50's, it is a little behind modern high-tech spy thrillers. But it is still nicely written and enjoyable to read.