Zero Minus Ten

Rating:
Summary: Fleming Would Roll in his Grave
Review: I'm not sure if an American could write Bond well, but there must be a better man to do it than Benson. This book is so amateurish, it's a wonder that it ever got through the editing process. It's cliche, predictable, and poorly researched.

Ian Fleming really KNEW what he was writing about. His Bond explored foreign capitals that Fleming visited as a professional. He knew what corners the transients stood on and why. Benson's description of Hong Kong is little better than the average tourist guide (and in some cases, worse). I know Benson went there, but it doesn't show in this waste of a book. If you can't even come up with a rich description of Hong Kong, one of the richest cities in the world, you'd better pack it in.

Bond himself has been stripped of his class and detail that made the original character so interesting. Fleming was an upper crust snob of the empire, and Bond was too, to a certain degree (though he wasn't in other ways, a complexity of character that Benson is incapable of exploring). Benson's Bond is a Hollywood cartoon utterly devoid of depth.

I know that Benson's defense is that he "isn't trying to be Fleming," but that doesn't make a bad book good. What were the Bond production people thinking in their choice of Benson?

Rating:
Summary: The Zero in the Title Refers to Raymond Benson
Review: Raymond Benson is the worst when it comes to picking up where Ian Fleming and John Gardner left off. As a die hard Bond fan, it simply stuns me that he got the nod to become the official "Bond" scribe.

First of all, his writing style is for 5-year-olds. Second, he smacks readers over the head with too much sex. Fleming did not go into lurid details, neither did Gardner. As a result Benson throws the class and style of the previous books out the window.

In a horrible short 007 story Benson wrote for Playboy, he brings back Irma Bunt of Spectre. Terrible. The character was not his to mess with. It's almost as rediculous as brining Goldfinger back from the dead 40 years on.

I urge fans to give Benson a wide berth and to stick with the Fleming and Gardner books. The poor quality of his books just show that he is a fanboy with poor literary talent.

Bond would never settle for second best, why should you?

Rating:
Summary: Benson's first atrocity
Review: Raymond Benson was a video games designer who was president of the James Bond fan club and author of The James Bond Bedside companion. Then one day, when John Gardner finally had enough of Bond, Glidrose hired Mr. Benson to carry on the franchise.

And so it goes. Each Raymond Benson effort, beginning with this one, has been a cheap, painful excuse for a James Bond novel, even by the worst Gardner standards. They are linear in the way a computer game is linear, going from part to part mechanically, guiding you along, past everything you expect.

Benson writes a cross between the cinematic James Bond and a fan-boy's imitation of Ian Fleming. The writing is so bad, so amateurish, that it begins to feel like fill-in-the-blanks. Trip to Q Branch? Check. Ridiculous, super-equipped car? Check. Gorgeous women falling for Bond? Check. Exotic assasins? Check.

Benson is writing a slightly more detailed version of the James Bond films, and trying to inject Fleming by simply citing the details about Bond and his personality, but nothing flows well, he doesn't get what Fleming was doing. It's like he has all the details, the plotting, a linear thread, but he can't write it. I'm confident Ian Fleming is spinning in his coffin as Bond is carried on by a super fan-boy, and an American, no less.

At this point, I would recommend reading Ian Fleming. John Gardner did a couple of decent books. Raymond Benson, however, is an embarassment. The Bond literary franchise has been cheapened, and is perhaps best left alone at this point.