For some bizzarre reason this book's title caught my eye and I was wondering if anyone knows of a good place in the US where I can order this book. I hear it is good and I am looking forward to reading it. Any help would be great.
I can only suggest you search some local second-hand book stores, or ebay.
I found it to be a good read. The second half is fantastic!
Good luck with your quest.
Drawn Out Dad.
Independent, one-shot comic books from the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia.
twitter.com/DrawnOutDad
Abebooks is a very good site, one that I have always found most reliable and prompt in delivery. Scroll down the link to find more copies in the USA, and if you are ever again looking for some obscure novel (like I often am) head there--they usually have it.
Hope you enjoy COLONEL SUN, it is a great thriller and gripping Bond adventure.
Ok, so I just joined this site, and I can see this is a "ressurrection topic" however....
I am not a great fan of Col Sun; I agree with the comments above: the middle section drags, the start is excellent, as is the torture sequence, it is also a very sexy novel, quite graphic and the main female character is excellent, in terms of setting Amis/Markham's Greece is as good as Fleming's Istanbul or Tokyo.
But the novel doesn't seem to have the pace of Flemings best books, even some of the action sequences are confusing, and there is a lot of talk about Communism and Greek polotics which is neither interesting nor particularly relevant. The plot is a non-event, returning to the blackmail ideas of FRWL, and the kidnapping of M is interesting, without being entirely necessary.
That said the main issue I have with Col Sun is that by 1968 the novels already seemed a little dated thanks to the huge success of the movies, yet Amis/Markham makes no concession to this and we have essentially a Cold War thriller as Fleming may have wrote in 1958. Fleming himself struggled with this problem in both YOLT and TMWTGG, the latter of which, as I understand it, Amis himself edited and completed after Fleming died. I think even in the late 1960s readers were expecting something more fanciful than the story put before them.
What made the initial Gardner novels so interesting was he updated the setting of the novels to the 1980s without altering the essential nature of James Bond. Of course Gardner's novels have their own problems and thats a subject for another forum.
In terms of a movie I am in agreement. Sun would make a great villian and the title is excellent. But havent some of the elements of Col Sun already been used? M was kidnapped in The World Is Not Enough, the Koreans in Die Another Day are clearly modelled on Colonel Sun, Niko Litsas is another Columbo from FYEO, and thats just 3. But given the ingenuity of todays screenwriters, I am sure something tangible could be created. I would look forward to it, I think it is about time the "other" Bond novels were taken as serious movie options. Maybe i will start a forum on that....
Amis was not a superb writer. He had a reputation for dragging on and on. I read Lucky Jim and was bored by the endless philophizing of small things. But Colonel Sun was pretty good. Yes, the middle was boring. But it was better than Lucky Jim.
For me, Colonel Sun is better than Fleming's.
John Gardner's Win Loose or Die and Scorpius are great.
In TWINE, with M kidnapped, we have something of CS. Too bad than EON haven't (yet?) produced this novel.
Uh oh. Sorry to kick this topic back to the top but I wanted to reply. For all you cats who say the middle seems to drag on you're right. It does. But, like Casino Royale where the Vesper/Bond beach romance seemed to drag on, this also makes the ending just as great. I thought the beach scene was tedious but Bond's last lines in Casino Royale made it worth it. The same goes for the ending of Colonel Sun.
scaramanga1The English RivieraPosts: 845Chief of Staff
Hopefully in a couple of months or less I will be writing an article on Colonel Sun for AJB as part of the A Licence to Read series - I'm lucky enough to have an uncorrected proof copy of Colonel Sun and will be giving it a scan to see if there are any differences in it from the final edition.
I think even in the late 1960s readers were expecting something more fanciful than the story put before them.
Interesting review chrisno1. I think this part underlines the inherent problem: Amis is simply not as fanciful an author as Fleming. Colonel Sun is a deliberately more low-key yarn, soaked in Greek atmosphere, with none of the element of the bizarre found in Fleming. Amis's novel is more intense, a lot more political and with a completely different pace. I don't view this as a negative development. I enjoy the change, and I think Amis handled it brilliantly.
It is almost impossible not to compare the two, but it really is apples and oranges. I enjoy both approaches—in contrast with Colonel Sun, my favourite Fleming novel is the wild You Only Live Twice—whereas some just dislike Amis's style. To each his own.
It's been a while since I've read Colonel Sun but I think that parts of the plot and the overall theme of the novel were the basisis of DAD. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I read so much I may be thinking of a different book.
Like others I enjoyed the fast paced start where Bond finds M kidnapped and tries to escape.
There was Colonel Moon in DAD, Colonel Sun in the Amis book, Dr. No by Fleming supposedly based on Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer.
All these cunning oriental villains !
De Bleuchamp. (From Gydnia, Poland!)
For me, Colonel Sun is better than Fleming's.
John Gardner's Win Loose or Die and Scorpius are great.
In TWINE, with M kidnapped, we have something of CS. Too bad than EON haven't (yet?) produced this novel.
In the film TWINE (1999) the female M was captured and imprisoned, but it's not as dramatic as the Colonel Sun beginning.
De Bleuchamp.
"Ten minutes and counting..."
I've never read Colonel Sun, but with the forthcoming release of the Faulks novel, I would like to do so. Now this might sound silly, but I want a copy with a decent cover. ;% The cheapest available edition has a close-up of a Korean fella, and doesn't really catch my attention. There is another edition I liked, which is very 70's, with a blonde woman in a white dress, sitting on a very large gun, but it costs about thirty-odd pounds. Does anybody know of any other editions of the novel and where I can get them. Amazon lists plenty, but doesn't seem to have them in stock.
CS is a magnificent novel. Amis may have only done one, but what a novel to do. It is very rich in detail and violence. I proudly include it in the Fleming timeline.
Just finished reading Colonel Sun for the very first time, so thought I would add some thoughts to this thread. I find myself completely disagreeing with most here. I was just as disgusted with this as any of the other non-Fleming Bond novels I've read.
"Sun" started out somewhat promising at the golf course with Chief of Staff Tanner, but the first few pages brought my first "ugh" when I had to read that Bond was regularly patronizing an infirmed M with kindly visits as if M was some doddering, dear old uncle.
My guess is that the depiction of M in this novel is not something Fleming would have approved of.
The Colonel Sun character lacked any of the strength of any of Flemings villains. Colorful as they might have been, Fleming's at least tended to have some background that gave them substance. The bit with Sun at the end displaying a conscience completely undermined the attempt to make him appear ruthless, as if Bond was his first ever torture victim and Sun discovered he didn't have the stomach for it. Silly.
The Ariadne character was extremely obnoxious. Compare Bond's reaction to the discovery that Vesper was a double agent working for the Soviets with Bond's acceptance of Ariadne as an idealistic Communist working for the G.R.U. Not only accepts it, but chuckles over it at one point. It doesn't fit with the Fleming legacy. Also, why does she have to be a young kid, about half Bond's age? Why not a woman in her thirties?
Having Bond figuring out Sun's plot (quite a lame one, by the way) less than half way through the book took all the mystery out. I had to conclude Bond was clairvoyant and could read the author's mind. The idea that Sun had to capture M and Bond, and use them, and them alone, for his plot to be a success was utterly ridiculous. This revelation by Bond at such an early part of the book also was not in keeping with Fleming's usual style. If the arch-villain has a devious plot, Fleming's Bond is usually in the dark until close to the end of the book. This was another aspect of Fleming's story-telling style that made Bond seem more human and less of a cardboard cutout. Fleming's Bond could be confused, have doubts and fears, was not always on top of situations and often seemed like an underdog. This made his predicaments darker and his triumphs more meaningful. I never had that sense in Amis' novel, right from the get-go when Bond eludes several armed professionals after being injected with a sedative.
Other irritants:
1) the character of Von Richter, an extraneous villain tossed in to round out the cast and give Litsas a focal point for revenge.
2) The Litsas character, a sad attempt to replicate someone along the lines of a Kerim Bey.
3) But worst of all, the momentum-killing chapter titled "The Temporary Captain." Remember the part in Dr. No where Bond has Quarrel find two locals to drive Strangways' Sunbeam Alpine to use as decoys, and they end up getting killed? Now try to imagine Fleming devoting an entire chapter to the identity of one of those decoys...several boring pages worth about a completely insignificant character's hopes and dreams, a character who is going nowhere in the story. Amis is like Fleming? I don't think so.
With regard to the Greek setting, I have to say Amis also lacked Fleming's verve for making settings come to life (e.g., the beginning of OHMSS). In my opinion, Amis's Greece was a pasteboard backdrop. I will admit that given the nationality of Colonel Sun I expected the story to take place in the Far East...but that expectation had nothing to do with my boredom with the setting. Over half the novel has Bond tooling around a Greek island, but at no time did I feel as a reader that I was there in the way Fleming seems to be able to do with such apparent ease.
While Fleming's novels might appear "fanciful," in my opinion he was still able to suspend disbelief far better than Amis, Gardner or Benson. In the end, I have to say that far too much of Amis' story just didn't ring true enough. If Amis is the most like Fleming, then that is a real indictment on all the other Fleming successors.
That's a good review, has the ring of truth. I sort of read bits of it years ago. I found the M thing a bit disturbing and not the usual Bond thing; it did denigrade the character a bit I found. One good sex scene with Ariadne (and Fleming was about the only author who had the stomach for sex scenes imo) and that's about it. It wasn't like you could dip into it and get little nuggets that made you want to read on, irrespective of the plot chronology.
Interestingly, Fleming's widow Anne HATED CS. She was - and remained - against anyone continuing the Bond series, and ESPECIALLY, Amis. She feared Bond would end up like his character Lucky Jim, flaunting authority and selling out his country to the Russians. According Lycett's Fleming bio, she wrote a scathing review of the book for a London newspaper that was never published for fear of a libel suit! Amis said he loved writing the book because he got to tweak some of his leftist friends.
Out of all of the post-Fleming authors Bond novels, I enjoyed Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun above them all, including Jeffery Deaver's Carte Blanche which was pretty good IMO.
Bond's relationship with M is revealed alot more, his "love scene" with Ariadne Alexandrou is quite riske (at least that's what I thought when reading this novel on the train into work one morning) and I still remember feeling squeamy when the power drill came out.
Drawn Out Dad.
Independent, one-shot comic books from the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia.
twitter.com/DrawnOutDad
Out of all of the post-Fleming authors Bond novels, I enjoyed Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun above them all, including Jeffery Deaver's Carte Blanche which was pretty good IMO.
Bond's relationship with M is revealed alot more, his "love scene" with Ariadne Alexandrou is quite riske (at least that's what I thought when reading this novel on the train into work one morning) and I still remember feeling squeamy when the power drill came out.
Do not forget that Kingsley was the first novel he wrote after the death of Fleming, and people think that it was he who ended TMWGG.With respect to Carte Blanche, I prefer Devil May Care to Carta Blanca, and before Colonel Sun at Devil May Care
scaramanga1The English RivieraPosts: 845Chief of Staff
I re-visited this novel recently and have to say - It is indeed perhaps a little more "realistic" than some of Fleming's and certainly makes it more suitable for today's audiences especially the generation that in the last decade has been introduced to the whole 24 and Jason Bourne style of espionage and thrills. Yes of course due to the time when it was published it still has that feeling of the period but in terms of thrills and darkness that todays audiences expect it achieves this easily. I for one have always liked this novel -despite its slowing down in the middle. Lets face it -you watch a movie its success is monitored by its peaks and troughs if the pace dips it is to allow for the tale to build to another exciting peak. The audience is taken from one point to another. The pre - title sequence in a Bond movie excites us then the tale develops building up to a particular moment -then it levels out and builds again. It is essentially the same with a novel. Amis achieves this throughout the novel -yes it slows down in the middle but builds the tension expertly.
I just finished Colonel Sun, my first non-Fleming novel. And over all I have to say I enjoyed it.
One of my complaints are that the character of Sun isn't fleshed out enough. Also at the end when he apologized to Bond and asked for his forgiveness for the torture, it seems very unrealistic and made the character a lot less intimidating. When Bond stabs a man to death who's asking for his forgiveness it doesn't make it as dramatic and satisfying.
Also the chapter ""The Temporary Captain" comes off as completely pointless. He could have simply mentioned the boat swap in another chapter, then have Sun tell Bond the man's fate when they first meet face to face. I dont see why we need a detailed account of it. Seems to just drag the story down
I'm reading it again now and really like it. Its more like Fleming than the other continuation novels in my view
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,845MI6 Agent
I'm writing a piece on Colonel Sun at the moment on the increased levels of violence depicted in the novel and also on the rather unusual death meted out to Colonel Sun Laing-tan.
What are our thoughts on these overlooked aspects of Colonel Sun by Kingsley Amis?
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,845MI6 Agent
P.S. The piece is called 'The Strange Death of Colonel Sun' and I want to try and get it posted on The Bondologist Blog soonish. It's a lenghty piece focusing on a very specific part of the Colonel Sun novel and its particularly unusual villain and villain death scene - though there are some links back to the original Fleming novels and forward to the Eon Bond films.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,845MI6 Agent
The Bondologist Blog is proud to present a Guest Article today by Colonel Sun expert Hank Reineke:
I'd love to hear your thoughts on his follow-up to his famous October 2005 007 Magazine article "The Dossier on Robert Markham". -{
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
superadoRegent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,656MI6 Agent
Thank you again, SM, a very interesting article and I am much appreciative that the interest in Amis’ role in the Bond canon is very much alive. I thought it better to tackle this here in AJB, since I’m more acquainted with the audience here. In Hank Reineke's article, from the 2nd paragraph, he states:
" ..there's no doubt now that Amis did receive a remittance for his time and effort for working on the final typescript of that novel... "
...and he goes on to present from Jon Gilbert's book all the background information on how deep Amis got involved with TMWTGG. But then he concludes:
"But all evidence suggests the changes made by Amis and several others made privy to the typescript were all grammatical and/or minor and cosmetic in nature; no one involved had dared change the author's intent or altered the storyline in any manner; No matter what the fanciful conspiracy-theorists might suggest."
This seems self-contradictory, or in the least, a large leap was made from the statements of my first quote to the second quote, especially within the scope of the same paragraph and Hank didn’t present data to support that last statement. Where's "all (the) evidence"? ...and in the least, he could have provided the same amount of background information as he did in support of his earlier statement (my first quote). Based on the data Hank did (and did not) present, I would say that the jury is still out on the extent of Amis' ghostwriting.
BTW, I have a copy of Gilbert's Bibliography, so I think I shall crack it open and read about TMWTGG myself before I sell it!
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
Comments
I found it to be a good read. The second half is fantastic!
Good luck with your quest.
Independent, one-shot comic books from the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia.
twitter.com/DrawnOutDad
Hope you enjoy COLONEL SUN, it is a great thriller and gripping Bond adventure.
I am not a great fan of Col Sun; I agree with the comments above: the middle section drags, the start is excellent, as is the torture sequence, it is also a very sexy novel, quite graphic and the main female character is excellent, in terms of setting Amis/Markham's Greece is as good as Fleming's Istanbul or Tokyo.
But the novel doesn't seem to have the pace of Flemings best books, even some of the action sequences are confusing, and there is a lot of talk about Communism and Greek polotics which is neither interesting nor particularly relevant. The plot is a non-event, returning to the blackmail ideas of FRWL, and the kidnapping of M is interesting, without being entirely necessary.
That said the main issue I have with Col Sun is that by 1968 the novels already seemed a little dated thanks to the huge success of the movies, yet Amis/Markham makes no concession to this and we have essentially a Cold War thriller as Fleming may have wrote in 1958. Fleming himself struggled with this problem in both YOLT and TMWTGG, the latter of which, as I understand it, Amis himself edited and completed after Fleming died. I think even in the late 1960s readers were expecting something more fanciful than the story put before them.
What made the initial Gardner novels so interesting was he updated the setting of the novels to the 1980s without altering the essential nature of James Bond. Of course Gardner's novels have their own problems and thats a subject for another forum.
In terms of a movie I am in agreement. Sun would make a great villian and the title is excellent. But havent some of the elements of Col Sun already been used? M was kidnapped in The World Is Not Enough, the Koreans in Die Another Day are clearly modelled on Colonel Sun, Niko Litsas is another Columbo from FYEO, and thats just 3. But given the ingenuity of todays screenwriters, I am sure something tangible could be created. I would look forward to it, I think it is about time the "other" Bond novels were taken as serious movie options. Maybe i will start a forum on that....
Go to my website: I have all the answers http://www.smoochbaby.com/
John Gardner's Win Loose or Die and Scorpius are great.
In TWINE, with M kidnapped, we have something of CS. Too bad than EON haven't (yet?) produced this novel.
It is almost impossible not to compare the two, but it really is apples and oranges. I enjoy both approaches—in contrast with Colonel Sun, my favourite Fleming novel is the wild You Only Live Twice—whereas some just dislike Amis's style. To each his own.
There was Colonel Moon in DAD, Colonel Sun in the Amis book, Dr. No by Fleming supposedly based on Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer.
All these cunning oriental villains !
De Bleuchamp. (From Gydnia, Poland!)
De Bleuchamp.
"Ten minutes and counting..."
"Sun" started out somewhat promising at the golf course with Chief of Staff Tanner, but the first few pages brought my first "ugh" when I had to read that Bond was regularly patronizing an infirmed M with kindly visits as if M was some doddering, dear old uncle.
My guess is that the depiction of M in this novel is not something Fleming would have approved of.
The Colonel Sun character lacked any of the strength of any of Flemings villains. Colorful as they might have been, Fleming's at least tended to have some background that gave them substance. The bit with Sun at the end displaying a conscience completely undermined the attempt to make him appear ruthless, as if Bond was his first ever torture victim and Sun discovered he didn't have the stomach for it. Silly.
The Ariadne character was extremely obnoxious. Compare Bond's reaction to the discovery that Vesper was a double agent working for the Soviets with Bond's acceptance of Ariadne as an idealistic Communist working for the G.R.U. Not only accepts it, but chuckles over it at one point. It doesn't fit with the Fleming legacy. Also, why does she have to be a young kid, about half Bond's age? Why not a woman in her thirties?
Having Bond figuring out Sun's plot (quite a lame one, by the way) less than half way through the book took all the mystery out. I had to conclude Bond was clairvoyant and could read the author's mind. The idea that Sun had to capture M and Bond, and use them, and them alone, for his plot to be a success was utterly ridiculous. This revelation by Bond at such an early part of the book also was not in keeping with Fleming's usual style. If the arch-villain has a devious plot, Fleming's Bond is usually in the dark until close to the end of the book. This was another aspect of Fleming's story-telling style that made Bond seem more human and less of a cardboard cutout. Fleming's Bond could be confused, have doubts and fears, was not always on top of situations and often seemed like an underdog. This made his predicaments darker and his triumphs more meaningful. I never had that sense in Amis' novel, right from the get-go when Bond eludes several armed professionals after being injected with a sedative.
Other irritants:
1) the character of Von Richter, an extraneous villain tossed in to round out the cast and give Litsas a focal point for revenge.
2) The Litsas character, a sad attempt to replicate someone along the lines of a Kerim Bey.
3) But worst of all, the momentum-killing chapter titled "The Temporary Captain." Remember the part in Dr. No where Bond has Quarrel find two locals to drive Strangways' Sunbeam Alpine to use as decoys, and they end up getting killed? Now try to imagine Fleming devoting an entire chapter to the identity of one of those decoys...several boring pages worth about a completely insignificant character's hopes and dreams, a character who is going nowhere in the story. Amis is like Fleming? I don't think so.
With regard to the Greek setting, I have to say Amis also lacked Fleming's verve for making settings come to life (e.g., the beginning of OHMSS). In my opinion, Amis's Greece was a pasteboard backdrop. I will admit that given the nationality of Colonel Sun I expected the story to take place in the Far East...but that expectation had nothing to do with my boredom with the setting. Over half the novel has Bond tooling around a Greek island, but at no time did I feel as a reader that I was there in the way Fleming seems to be able to do with such apparent ease.
While Fleming's novels might appear "fanciful," in my opinion he was still able to suspend disbelief far better than Amis, Gardner or Benson. In the end, I have to say that far too much of Amis' story just didn't ring true enough. If Amis is the most like Fleming, then that is a real indictment on all the other Fleming successors.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Bond's relationship with M is revealed alot more, his "love scene" with Ariadne Alexandrou is quite riske (at least that's what I thought when reading this novel on the train into work one morning) and I still remember feeling squeamy when the power drill came out.
Independent, one-shot comic books from the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia.
twitter.com/DrawnOutDad
Do not forget that Kingsley was the first novel he wrote after the death of Fleming, and people think that it was he who ended TMWGG.With respect to Carte Blanche, I prefer Devil May Care to Carta Blanca, and before Colonel Sun at Devil May Care
One of my complaints are that the character of Sun isn't fleshed out enough. Also at the end when he apologized to Bond and asked for his forgiveness for the torture, it seems very unrealistic and made the character a lot less intimidating. When Bond stabs a man to death who's asking for his forgiveness it doesn't make it as dramatic and satisfying.
Also the chapter ""The Temporary Captain" comes off as completely pointless. He could have simply mentioned the boat swap in another chapter, then have Sun tell Bond the man's fate when they first meet face to face. I dont see why we need a detailed account of it. Seems to just drag the story down
What are our thoughts on these overlooked aspects of Colonel Sun by Kingsley Amis?
http://thebondologistblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/eleven-years-later-addendum-to-dossier.html
I'd love to hear your thoughts on his follow-up to his famous October 2005 007 Magazine article "The Dossier on Robert Markham".
...and he goes on to present from Jon Gilbert's book all the background information on how deep Amis got involved with TMWTGG. But then he concludes:
This seems self-contradictory, or in the least, a large leap was made from the statements of my first quote to the second quote, especially within the scope of the same paragraph and Hank didn’t present data to support that last statement. Where's "all (the) evidence"? ...and in the least, he could have provided the same amount of background information as he did in support of his earlier statement (my first quote). Based on the data Hank did (and did not) present, I would say that the jury is still out on the extent of Amis' ghostwriting.
BTW, I have a copy of Gilbert's Bibliography, so I think I shall crack it open and read about TMWTGG myself before I sell it!