Fan Fiction - Reviews
chrisno1
LondonPosts: 3,601MI6 Agent
Obsidian Masquerade was written in 2007 by members of the fan community at AJB.
It is still available for download on the following website:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090419120550/http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/
This is my review:
The collaborative opus Obsidian Masquerade is an intriguing but not altogether successful piece of Fan Fiction. The cover art is brilliant and for that alone the novel deserves some recognition; it was the artwork which got me excited about the story. But while the tale certainly provides ample examples of authorial enthusiasm, it lacks any clear direction and meanders on its way to a tame if robust conclusion. Sadly, the sum of the parts does not add up. There is plenty of stirring violent incident, but the characters especially the women, lack emotional depth and the plot is hopelessly convoluted. The novel reads more like a series of loosely related episodes which give us a sense of the worlds of James Bond and Max Obsidian, the titular villain, without ever getting under the skin of its protagonists.
The novel starts brilliantly, with James Bond pondering the recent days of a mission to Finland as he pilots a Cessna aircraft to safety. We are then taken back to witness Bond’s assassination of the traitor Jonathon Carter and his initial meeting with the mystical villainess Baba Yaga. Here already the mayhem seems designed for purely spurious reasons. A Wild West style gunfight in the snow, a night of lust with a young people-trafficked girl and a moment of nail-biting torture may be exhilaratingly fun, but they are not lending any purpose to the narrative.
The early dalliance with Lissa is particularly irksome. Her role initially appears important but she is later sidelined and virtually written out. The swift and nonchalant loving is compounded by Bond’s plan to abandon Lissa in Finland and fly to England alone, putting his new acquaintance in immediate peril. That this waif is able to drive Bond’s TVR at breakneck speed through Helsinki, avoiding the pursuit of her once captors, stretches credulity. Bond meanwhile is making a somewhat pointless flight to freedom alone: he actually has assistance in Finland in the form of the genial Jari Oksanen but neglects to use him. Lissa meanwhile shows remarkable insight and calmness in contacting the local agent; more so than Bond’s manic departure in the Cessna. This is where we came into the story and how we got there eventually spoils what was a very good opening monologue.
Perhaps the most successful section of the initial gambit is Baba Yaga, an old witch, who turns out to be no such thing but instead a rather fetching assassin and mistress of disguise, the beautiful Adriana Valivova. That Adriana too is sidelined, morphing into a sort of nymphomaniac psychopath, is disappointing. She has little to do other than offer a consoling shoulder to her lover Max Obsidian, a man equally obsessed by appearance.
The idea of disguise and concealment crops up several times and is one of the most rewarding aspects of the novel. At one point or other almost every member of the cast isn’t behaving how you expect them to, isn’t playing themselves or isn’t in control of their actions. This fractured reality manifests itself most obviously when Obsidian attempts cognitive therapy and ends up beheading his psychologist. While this seems a rather severe reaction to his formative memory loss, it certainly highlights how unhinged the multimillionaire businessman is. Too often however, Obsidian appears to be playing mind games simply because he can, not because he needs to. Tainted with a familial history based on the mythology of Romulus and Remus, he lacks a solid personality. I was reminded of that equally bizarre apparition Dragonpol in Gardner’s Never Send Flowers. Obsidian should have better motive than wishing to usurp his brother’s latent superiority.
There is a very clever plot device involving mind control, but the gimmicks evolved by Obsidian, are swamped in violence and their disposal is unnecessarily complicated. The strategy is utilized best in a chapter entitled “House of Cards” that has Bond’s brainwashing juxtaposed with a viral attack on MI6 headquarters. The tension in both scenes is well realized and the comparison between manipulation of a brain and the manipulation of computer software has much resonance. I enjoyed this scene, it was taut and tight. Ultimately however, the computer meltdown doesn’t appear to have any relevance to the story and is merely a side effect; Obsidian isn’t doing anything with the information he might be gleaning, indeed the virus is only destroying the content, not extracting it. Equally, Bond’s brainwashing and framing is a McGuffin; we are later told Obsidian already has collaborators inside the Indian missile base, so why does he need James Bond to infiltrate the station and launch a nuclear attack on Pakistan? He doesn’t.
This may well be the fault of the collaborative writing process. There are distinct shifts in style and focus throughout the novel which mean some scenes are well constructed and move the story forward, while others are flabby, thin or completely unnecessary. Bond does a lot of flying between London and India and Finland and London to no effect. It reads as though the writers had some neat scenes they desperately wanted to include but couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. That the novel climaxes at the exact spot it started seems doubtfully forborne.
The collaboration, however it was meted, also results in very uneven prose. Some sections are written with clarity and vivacity, others have a stark staging that reads more like a screenplay. The most disappointing episode comes during Bond’s assault on the Indian nuclear missile silo. This should really be the thrilling climax to the novel - after all OO7 is saving the world from a nuclear attack. But the description of the fight with Cobra, another intriguing but underused assassin, is hopelessly bland; at one point we are told “the gun went off with a loud BANG.” That’s the sort of writing I’d expect to read in children’s fiction. Later on Bond’s progress to the launch facility is descriptively curtailed and devoid of all tension. There’s a missile being launched for goodness sake! When he finally reaches said destination, Bond shoots everyone with his only thought being “they were all Obsidian’s goons anyway” which is heartless and, even for a ruthless James Bond, out of character. I don’t believe he’d kill just anybody and everybody especially as these technicians are the same ones who could shut down the launch program. Having created this problem, the author(s) resolve it with no pretense and a holocaust is prevented in two sentences. This was turgid stuff.
There is more of its ilk during Bond and Daya’s infiltration of the Crucible base in Finland. Daya is a female operative, the brother of Cobra, who Bond has killed during a fight. This is a triangle of quite seedy and improbable foundations. That the girl hardly sheds more than a few tears over her brother and doesn’t even hang about to bury him adds nothing to her character. Making love to Bond on a Lear jet is her only catharsis and it reads as badly as it sounds. Her passivity in the act is unsettling. I was disappointed because Daya initially comes across as a very strong woman, but as the story progresses her persona becomes based on her interaction with other people, not on her own merits. She does very little at the eventual climax while Bond engages in an over the top life or death struggle with his nemesis.
Here perhaps, we witness the reliance on cinematic vision to tell the story as Bond’s extended bout of fisticuffs reads like a list of instructions to stunt men. It lacks any sense of danger, injury or fear. At one point someone has their head repeatedly stamped on, but it doesn’t stop them fighting. A horrible exhibition.
Other stages are more rewarding. Take the huge bare amphitheatre where Bond is drugged or Obsidian’s salon bedecked with masques and feudal swords; each has the stamp of Ken Adam all over them. But these flights of visual fantasy can’t disguise the overall thinness of the piece, which while full of the expected thrills, misses a heart and struggles to grip the reader.
At times Obsidian Masquerade reads well, but too often the core is lost among a thick web of intrigue partly of the authors’ own making. It really cries out for a firm guiding hand and the collaborative process doesn’t lend itself to this. A little judicious revision and editing could have pushed the novel a long way, as it stands Obsidian Masquerade is not a complete failure, but it is a trifle disappointing. The good points are worth sticking around for, I simply wish there were more of them.
It is still available for download on the following website:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090419120550/http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/
This is my review:
The collaborative opus Obsidian Masquerade is an intriguing but not altogether successful piece of Fan Fiction. The cover art is brilliant and for that alone the novel deserves some recognition; it was the artwork which got me excited about the story. But while the tale certainly provides ample examples of authorial enthusiasm, it lacks any clear direction and meanders on its way to a tame if robust conclusion. Sadly, the sum of the parts does not add up. There is plenty of stirring violent incident, but the characters especially the women, lack emotional depth and the plot is hopelessly convoluted. The novel reads more like a series of loosely related episodes which give us a sense of the worlds of James Bond and Max Obsidian, the titular villain, without ever getting under the skin of its protagonists.
The novel starts brilliantly, with James Bond pondering the recent days of a mission to Finland as he pilots a Cessna aircraft to safety. We are then taken back to witness Bond’s assassination of the traitor Jonathon Carter and his initial meeting with the mystical villainess Baba Yaga. Here already the mayhem seems designed for purely spurious reasons. A Wild West style gunfight in the snow, a night of lust with a young people-trafficked girl and a moment of nail-biting torture may be exhilaratingly fun, but they are not lending any purpose to the narrative.
The early dalliance with Lissa is particularly irksome. Her role initially appears important but she is later sidelined and virtually written out. The swift and nonchalant loving is compounded by Bond’s plan to abandon Lissa in Finland and fly to England alone, putting his new acquaintance in immediate peril. That this waif is able to drive Bond’s TVR at breakneck speed through Helsinki, avoiding the pursuit of her once captors, stretches credulity. Bond meanwhile is making a somewhat pointless flight to freedom alone: he actually has assistance in Finland in the form of the genial Jari Oksanen but neglects to use him. Lissa meanwhile shows remarkable insight and calmness in contacting the local agent; more so than Bond’s manic departure in the Cessna. This is where we came into the story and how we got there eventually spoils what was a very good opening monologue.
Perhaps the most successful section of the initial gambit is Baba Yaga, an old witch, who turns out to be no such thing but instead a rather fetching assassin and mistress of disguise, the beautiful Adriana Valivova. That Adriana too is sidelined, morphing into a sort of nymphomaniac psychopath, is disappointing. She has little to do other than offer a consoling shoulder to her lover Max Obsidian, a man equally obsessed by appearance.
The idea of disguise and concealment crops up several times and is one of the most rewarding aspects of the novel. At one point or other almost every member of the cast isn’t behaving how you expect them to, isn’t playing themselves or isn’t in control of their actions. This fractured reality manifests itself most obviously when Obsidian attempts cognitive therapy and ends up beheading his psychologist. While this seems a rather severe reaction to his formative memory loss, it certainly highlights how unhinged the multimillionaire businessman is. Too often however, Obsidian appears to be playing mind games simply because he can, not because he needs to. Tainted with a familial history based on the mythology of Romulus and Remus, he lacks a solid personality. I was reminded of that equally bizarre apparition Dragonpol in Gardner’s Never Send Flowers. Obsidian should have better motive than wishing to usurp his brother’s latent superiority.
There is a very clever plot device involving mind control, but the gimmicks evolved by Obsidian, are swamped in violence and their disposal is unnecessarily complicated. The strategy is utilized best in a chapter entitled “House of Cards” that has Bond’s brainwashing juxtaposed with a viral attack on MI6 headquarters. The tension in both scenes is well realized and the comparison between manipulation of a brain and the manipulation of computer software has much resonance. I enjoyed this scene, it was taut and tight. Ultimately however, the computer meltdown doesn’t appear to have any relevance to the story and is merely a side effect; Obsidian isn’t doing anything with the information he might be gleaning, indeed the virus is only destroying the content, not extracting it. Equally, Bond’s brainwashing and framing is a McGuffin; we are later told Obsidian already has collaborators inside the Indian missile base, so why does he need James Bond to infiltrate the station and launch a nuclear attack on Pakistan? He doesn’t.
This may well be the fault of the collaborative writing process. There are distinct shifts in style and focus throughout the novel which mean some scenes are well constructed and move the story forward, while others are flabby, thin or completely unnecessary. Bond does a lot of flying between London and India and Finland and London to no effect. It reads as though the writers had some neat scenes they desperately wanted to include but couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. That the novel climaxes at the exact spot it started seems doubtfully forborne.
The collaboration, however it was meted, also results in very uneven prose. Some sections are written with clarity and vivacity, others have a stark staging that reads more like a screenplay. The most disappointing episode comes during Bond’s assault on the Indian nuclear missile silo. This should really be the thrilling climax to the novel - after all OO7 is saving the world from a nuclear attack. But the description of the fight with Cobra, another intriguing but underused assassin, is hopelessly bland; at one point we are told “the gun went off with a loud BANG.” That’s the sort of writing I’d expect to read in children’s fiction. Later on Bond’s progress to the launch facility is descriptively curtailed and devoid of all tension. There’s a missile being launched for goodness sake! When he finally reaches said destination, Bond shoots everyone with his only thought being “they were all Obsidian’s goons anyway” which is heartless and, even for a ruthless James Bond, out of character. I don’t believe he’d kill just anybody and everybody especially as these technicians are the same ones who could shut down the launch program. Having created this problem, the author(s) resolve it with no pretense and a holocaust is prevented in two sentences. This was turgid stuff.
There is more of its ilk during Bond and Daya’s infiltration of the Crucible base in Finland. Daya is a female operative, the brother of Cobra, who Bond has killed during a fight. This is a triangle of quite seedy and improbable foundations. That the girl hardly sheds more than a few tears over her brother and doesn’t even hang about to bury him adds nothing to her character. Making love to Bond on a Lear jet is her only catharsis and it reads as badly as it sounds. Her passivity in the act is unsettling. I was disappointed because Daya initially comes across as a very strong woman, but as the story progresses her persona becomes based on her interaction with other people, not on her own merits. She does very little at the eventual climax while Bond engages in an over the top life or death struggle with his nemesis.
Here perhaps, we witness the reliance on cinematic vision to tell the story as Bond’s extended bout of fisticuffs reads like a list of instructions to stunt men. It lacks any sense of danger, injury or fear. At one point someone has their head repeatedly stamped on, but it doesn’t stop them fighting. A horrible exhibition.
Other stages are more rewarding. Take the huge bare amphitheatre where Bond is drugged or Obsidian’s salon bedecked with masques and feudal swords; each has the stamp of Ken Adam all over them. But these flights of visual fantasy can’t disguise the overall thinness of the piece, which while full of the expected thrills, misses a heart and struggles to grip the reader.
At times Obsidian Masquerade reads well, but too often the core is lost among a thick web of intrigue partly of the authors’ own making. It really cries out for a firm guiding hand and the collaborative process doesn’t lend itself to this. A little judicious revision and editing could have pushed the novel a long way, as it stands Obsidian Masquerade is not a complete failure, but it is a trifle disappointing. The good points are worth sticking around for, I simply wish there were more of them.
Comments
My personal opinion was always one of enjoying the process rather than stressing over the final result, since there are far too many factors to reconcile during the process. Contributors would alternate writing either a chapter or short segment, depending on how their schedule permitted, and I personally would view my section as a writing exercise trying to incorporate the elements, characters, and situations that I had been handed into an interesting bit of reading, since the free-flowing nature of the collaborative process made plotting nigh impossible.
Anyway, I appreciate your review. It's a pleasure to see that you found elements about the story enjoyable, which in the end, is really what any collaborative fan fiction should be aiming for.
Cheers!
There will be more to come.
I am currently reading "The Vanguard Secret"
I guess this is my vain attempt to rejig the FanFic section....
Darenhat, I would agree whole heartedly with your assertion that FanFic should be enjoyable - for the writer, writer-collaborators or the reader - in that regard Obsidian Masquerade probably succeeds and maybe I didn't quite make that clear; my reviews are always intended to offer words of caution and comfort. I'm glad you considered I did both :007).
Thanks for your reply.
I look forward to reading your review of The Vanguard Secret, written by my friend Neal Kydd. I always considered it one of the strongest entries in the AJB fan fiction library. I was also pleased to design the cover art for Neal.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080821102025/http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/thevanguardsecret.php
The Vanguard Secret is an interesting novella particularly as the author propels his story without concentrating on James Bond, who is essentially the central protagonist and yet inhabits a role featuring in little over half the action.
This is a James Bond who inhabits a curious world of odd foreign accents (rather like Fleming’s archaic and frankly embarrassing patois’) and even odder physical and chemical science (which may be true, but I am not an expert) and a rather throw away series of humorous (or not) lines. Compounded by a non-linear narrative that confuses and serves no purpose other than to make the story a little less than a cat’s cradle, The Vanguard Secret suffers from being over ambitious, in that it has all the ingredients of a great novel, but seems to jigsaw them together in an arbitrary manner which fails to deliver the required result.
Bizarrely as we approach the climax, James Bond has become redundant and the action switches to the stealth progress of a nuclear submarine. This reduction of our hero to a bit part, miraculously appearing in a mini-submarine with little or no pretense as to exactly how he crept into the battle zone, makes the reader feel too far detached from the action. It is an interesting, but unsuccessful, conceit as the author, Neal Kydd, hasn’t allowed us to be familiar with the protagonists who take control of this situation. As a reader, why should I be concerned about the mission of HMS Astute when I am not even aware of James Bond’s role in the operation?
Equally the novella starts very strongly with the assassin Massimo Firenze comparing dead fish to dead humans, yet his role is continues essentially one of an observer. All the killing he does is perfunctory and has no relevance to the central plot. If it did I missed it and that’s an even poorer example of narrative extension. Thing is, I liked Massimo; he comes across as very real and well observed, yet he has no role in this story and more-or-less sits on the sidelines considering his life before he suffers a strangely ambivalent death. As a reader I ponder, if Massimo is an irrelevance, why should I be interested in him?
The curious thing about the writing of Mr Kydd, is that I am interested in many of his characters. There is much depth in the descriptions of people and places and situations which brings these characters alive. Massimo particularly seems to be a man obsessed by the death he delivers and the causes it may evoke. Similarly the reaction of Masterson to torture has a resonance which feels very humane, very real. It is sorrowful that such well realized characters have to be summarily extricated and that the villain of the piece is a fatty modern pirate who has been possessed by some strange matter [my phrase]. Forgive me for sounding contrite, but he is isn’t he and do I care? No.
That the author disguises his main antagonist under three names - Dex, Soames, Dexter - does not help matters. I spent half my time attempting to understand exactly which character was being featured (oh, sorry they were the same person…) sometimes more than once in a scene. In addition the non-linear narrative shoves the action incongruously backward and forward and certainly doesn’t aid any clarity. Indeed the whole piece felt like a series of very clever and well realized episodes which had been stitched together into a longer story.
And here perhaps lies the problem. Mr Kydd has created some quite excellent scenarios – witness the swim to a sunken battleship, Bond’s illicit briefing with M, the initial torture scene – and yet these scenes and others, while well-constructed, well -emoted and well-described, do not seem to contribute to the overall piece, rather they sit above it, as if suggesting what the author is capable of and yet not allowing the rest of the narrative to attest to his ability.
The Vanguard Secret is quite a short novel (a novella) and yet it feels quite long. There is a lot of extraneous plot which seems irrelevant, yet other explanations were left comparatively bare. For instance, I didn’t understand why Bond was put on half measures, other than as a spurious plot devise. It would have made more sense to explain this to the reader in a pertinent flashback (even more so given the author’s penchant for non-linear narrative) and subsequently re-emphasise the differences between M and the usurper Leonard Pettigrew.
This isn’t a criticism of Mr Kydd’s prose, which in the main is excellent, full of insight, metaphor and rhythm, and hence has the ability to draw the reader in; more it is a comment on the style of narrative which, with its jumping back and forth or to and fro, really needs a steadying hand. At some point the author needs to instruct the reader towards exactly what is occurring. This can be a sentence, a paragraph, an explanative chapter, and will help the recipient appreciate what is being offered.
The Vanguard Secret diligently touches on themes of greed and malice which is unusual for a Fan Fiction thriller and I cannot praise Mr Kydd enough for allowing his characters to be infused with ‘real’ guilt and avarice and rapaciousness. For all that, the central theme felt quite old-fashioned. I rather like the simplicity, but the major conceit is unbelievable: would a whole submarine crew turn to the bad at the sight of a catchment of emeralds? The Captain of said sub was very thorough and proper; his crew rather less so, to the point they even set up an exclusive club-casino at the submarine base. Cue the gambling scene.
Is this a sign of the times or a sign of authorial license? Probably the latter, but it didn’t hold water for me. Overall, rather like Neal Kydd’s M, I felt marooned under the sea. There was a host of fine ideas and some excellent psychological insight, but the piece didn’t hit the spot for me. It seems to ignore James Bond and while there is blood and thunder, it’s less impulsive and rather clinical. Even the sex is dull. The tortures meted out by the villains were more stimulating.
The Vanguard Secret is well worth a visit, but a reader might be warned towards being a little perplexed among the psychology and some well inscribed thrills.
Fan Fiction is allowed in literary form. Is it allowed in celluloid form? ie can anyone make a Bond movie and bung it on youtube? What are the legal restraints?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Chrisno1.
Thankyou for your review which was quite enlightening. I feel a little guilty as I dont think I put as much effort into some of the elements of the story as perhaps I could have. I must admit I havent read the story for some time - but you pick up on some points which are no doubt true.
A few comments...
For me when writing Bond I need to escape into the minds of all the characters so their point of view and mindset is important.
Prose style is obviously important so I work on that fairly hard.
I had not realised that the timeline was so abstract. I will read the novella again and see if you have got that right.
Massimo was a hit man who was hired to kill bond. The past case overlapped the new. Bond was also in the midst of the action when training, before he went to Scotland, so I am not so sure that he leaves the scenes too long and is not at the heart of all the action. I did need some exposition and also wanted to make sure what was happening to people, torture etc, seemed real.
Bond figured out the Scapa Flow base around the time when he visited the museum of artefacts - I may have not made this clear enough. Pettigrew (double agent) replaced M and worked for the same organisiation. It wasnt emeralds that changed the crew but a type of crystal that was discovered by scientists to contain extraordinary properties. It was purposely sunk to avoid any further use.
But as I say its a while since I read the story.
Great review - very thorough!
neal
There is quite a lot on YouTube etc.
This is probably the best one I ever saw. It's called Shamelady and is really quite good as these things go. I assume you can still download it althought you need to download a decoder as well. I had it saved on my old PC but that when died on me and I lost it. I never got around to downloading it again. Maybe it is time.
http://www.constellationstudios.org/article.php3?id_article=377
Thanks Neal.
Please note this is only based on my interpretation; it is quite possible I have got it wrong! :v
My comment on emeralds was referring to the initial piracy of the Vanguard. I understood the link between the museum and the hideout at Scapa Flow, it's how/when/why Bond gets into the minisub that perplexes me. None-the-less, in the general scheme of things these are small controversies.
The Mercurious Affair by Mkb007
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4548114/1/The_Mercurius_Affair
The Mercurius Affair is a short story of some interest. Bond is in Prague and Budapest attempting to unravel the mystery behind the murder of two top computer scientists.
The story ebbs and flows and contains all the correct ingredients for a Bond recipe, yet something is lacking. The brevity of the piece is certainly an issue. A lot of ground is covered in less than 17000 words and at times I wanted the pace of the story to slow down and allow the people and situations to come alive.
Mkb, the pen name of our author, has designed a modern story with a traditional hero. There is nothing modern about this James Bond, a white knight in disguise, a man whose interests are carnal and whose method is clinically efficient. While Bond enjoys his food and wine and women, I never felt this was man who observes and absorbs his surroundings. This was an almost robotic 007, a man whose injuries do not prevent him from continuing his work, a man who casts friends and victims aside, an obsessive who never looks back.
That he is almost undone comes as no surprise, for here Bond is so entirely certain of success he embarks on an affair with a female code-breaker, Sara Kiss, a woman he ought to be spending more time actively protecting rather than romancing. Their relationship has overtones of Bond and Kara’s from the movie The Living Daylights, where Bond’s macho posturing is offset by her girly naivety. Their constant flirtatious banter was hard to digest and sent the story spiraling into pastiche when it should have been driven into reality.
For here James Bond is combating a very real threat: one of cyber-viruses developed to infiltrate bank accounts and commit digital theft. This has the hallmarks of a well-constructed Goldfinger update; it genuinely brings the idea of grand heist up to date. The nominal villain (one among many) is the sophisticate Maxim Fokin and he is smooth and sleek, as you’d expect a twenty-first century tycoon to be. He’s no fool and recognizes that true power lies with the economists. It is a pity Fokin isn’t allowed to pontificate more, because there is a ring of truth to his thesis which needs exploring. As it stands, his finale is swift and bloody but lacks tension.
Indeed the story does feel shorn of suspense. Early on we are treated to a second person narrative as Bond recaps the mission. This is quite a condensed passage and while it provides the reader with a rapid update, it also deserved more attention. Quite simply, Bond’s tussle with the Albanian Mafia hoods is more exciting than anything in the story proper. The author also spends time explaining how the two scientists died and this too is succinct, yet seems to have deeper significance to our steely James Bond – he had once been the lover of the female victim. Bond’s memory of that fleeting affair is one of the few times the author gives us an insight into 007, one of the few times he looks at his past rather than to his purposefully grey future, and it’s both rewarding and grimly understated. Fleming, I feel, would have enjoyed and understood the bleak bareness of the brief liaison.
The Mercurius Affair isn’t a failure, but it feels much too compact. The characters need more development and the plot strands and episodes expanding. Despite all that it has a familiar feel: you always feel slightly at home reading some of the cheesy lines and imagining your favourite 007 delivering them. As Fan Fiction, it probably approaches and delivers its product in the right spirit and you can’t say much against that.
It can be downloaded on the following link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080827163555/http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/unitedwefall.php
UNITED WE FALL is a lot of fun.
James Bond battles the financial crisis, modern technology, Blofeld’s offspring and his own ego in 21 pages of graphic strip action. It is all pared to the bone but that doesn’t mean it’s unsubtle. Yes, it is irreverent nonsense, but the author and artist has fashioned a quick entertaining piece that touches on much that is true about Bond mythology.
I won’t go tremendously deep on this, but I was thinking about the T.V. cartoon character ‘Archer’ and how he’s basically a dumbed down Bond, yet there is still affection for him from teh audience. UNITED WE FALL has a similar effect. This isn’t a very hospitable Bond, he seems to think everyone is against him, but for all that he’s a lot of fun and manages to save the day just as he always did.
It is worth stressing again that this piece is a graphic novel / short story and as such, I’d take my gloves off and warmly shake the hand of anyone with the patience to draw 21 pages of a cartoon strip, make it coherent and give the character’s a semblance of personality.
Well done!
It can be downloaded on the following link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080821102921/http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/ultimo.php
ULTIMO is another graphic novel from the artistry of Asio.
It is similarly swift and a lot of fun. The characters are better drawn than in UNITED WE FALL, the James Bond looks younger here than in the previous strip. The humour is still to the forefront; the writer has definitely got this spot on. There are also a few nods to the movie and book series that were very welcome. Once again I am stunned and staggered by the effort that has gone into these 20 pages. This is a condensed tale presented in sixty images - if you like, a sort of trailer for a bigger project. The best lines and best clips are all there and you don’t need anything more to explain what’s going to happen.
I vaguely recall that in the late seventies Mad produced a six page comic strip that ripped the piss out of Moonraker. ULTIMO and its companion piece UNITED WE FALL share the humour and irreverence of that magazine and are a pleasure to read.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080821103010/http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/archangel.php
While John Lam claims his work ARCHANGEL is a screenplay, it features too much in the way of explanatory prose to be taken as such. Essentially it’s a short story and works fairly well, particularly when the author pulls away from the action and describes Bond’s emotions and his instinctive human reactions.
There is a heavy attention to detail here, some of which feels unnecessary (Bond has particular tastes in techno music apparently) others repetitive (all those designer dresses the women wear, even the nightgowns were extravagant), which didn’t quite hold my interest. The better part is where the author concentrates on character. There is a strong sense of who James Bond is and the mores he struggles with. The titular villain was suitable nasty and the surprise introduction of a past nemesis rather gratifying in a way that out Benson’s Benson. The two women are less successful. Both are essentially ‘tart’s with a heart’, and it is hard to warm to such one dimensional people. Bond finds it hard too and his conversations with the heroine Irina are distinctly chauvinistic and old fashioned. Even Fleming’s ‘50’s Bond had a better understanding of the emotional rudiments of prostitution.
None the less the piece has some nice visual touches and climaxes well. Some of the language is a bit extraneous (I’m being a trifle unfair, but the Americanisms did grate) but generally this is a solid and short romp through the world of James Bond.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080827163159/http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/knightofshadows.php
Lazenby 880 wrote KNIGHT OF SHADOWS in 2004. While it doesn’t present anything startlingly new, the story has some fine touches and individual flair. The opening two paragraphs, for instance, which set the tone of the piece, as Bond reflects on the vagaries of sudden infatuation, are very fine. Later, M re-interprets those vagaries into something malignant, and Bond is cursing his own failure of the flesh. Indeed it is Bond’s fight against his own foibles that sits at the heart of the story.
Bond has met and made love to Sophie Coco, who turns out to be the secret courier for The Knight, a mysterious covert villain, and M wants him to follow the lead to Rome. Deceptively simple, the story has an undercurrent of melancholy which the author doesn’t quite bring to the fore. This is probably a good thing as it prevents the tale form becoming maudlin.
Unusually, Bond takes an antagonistic attitude towards the heroine, considering her deception a grand betrayal as if love must conquer all. It’s a welcome and curious take on the normal proceedings. I liked that this James Bond is innately human – he physically and emotionally ties himself to the deceit. His mistake becomes her treachery and he passes the blame for his errors onto his reactions to her. That Sophie chooses not to contact him and leaves Bond drinking at home alone feels entirely appropriate.
Let’s not forget the villains in this piece: an errant businessman, a psychopath, a strong arm man. Each is sparsely drawn, but we do get a sense of their single-mindedness. Overall this hardly seems to matter for they are not the main focus of the story’s attention; it isn’t heading in that direction. The staccato action, when it comes, is rewarding. We get a taste for Bond’s ruthlessness without the labored narrative attached to most Fan Fiction. Perhaps though, the piece is a little too concise. The overall tightness could have loosened a little, allowing conjecture and deeper insight. That isn’t so much a criticism as a suggestion. Conversely, some of the prose is long winded and while I’m all for attractive words, a lot of them seem out of place here. Some terseness might have been beneficial. Additionally, people smirk a lot in Lazenby’s world; variety in the telling, please! But let’s not get distracted, there is a lot of good work in the few pages of KNIGHT OF SHADOWS and the potential for more is very clear.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080827164201/http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/smokeheart.php
The over-riding melancholia in KNIGHT OF SHADOWS is repeated in Lazenby 880’s second opus SMOKEHEART.
Here, James Bond is in Toronto pursuing Richard Smokeheart, an ex-Iron Curtain industrialist intent on destroying London with a dirty plutonium bomb. This story has a wider scope than its predecessor, starting with a cod-Goldeneye prologue and ending with a cod-Casino Royale suicide while the middle section invokes themes from Moonraker. I enjoyed the descriptions of Toronto and Poland, which had occasional flourishes of wordy brilliance, but I’d urge the author to be more contrite. Less is sometimes more and frequently he overplays his descriptive hand.
I struggled with his characters. The cannibal assassin Felicia is the stand out protagonist, a vicious woman turned on by blood and death, but I found the lingering descriptions of her gore soaked ecstasies over the top and rather distasteful. Where the author succeeds is in addressing her animalistic tendencies; he even refers to her as both a lion and a gazelle; she is as ruthless as the hunter and as elegant as the hunted. Characterized by a single pure motivator, Felicia was a welcome change to the normal psychopathic henchman, despite the nastiness. Unremorseful, she kills for the joy of it, and isn’t saddled with any bogus psychological background. She’s very effective.
Not so the main villain, Smokeheart, who is comparatively benign. I didn’t get any impression of the man’s power and influence. He, like all authority figures, seems to get up Bond’s nose with relative ease. The two men share a terse encounter at his mansion which quickly becomes antagonistic for no discernible reason. This was probably the most wearisome scene in the story, a pointless confrontation that doesn’t serve any purpose other than to introduce the hero to his nemesis.
Bond himself retains a fatalistic view of his world. I sense that Lazenby doesn’t actually like his hero very much. This Bond is a rough piece of work. Clipped in his manner and irked by authority, he never once seems in control of the mission, labeling everyone around him as incompetent, yet reverting to his own foibles, those basic instincts of lust and anger, to satisfy his ends. Bond’s ungallant attitude towards his lover, Kate, is unsympathetic.
Indeed Kate Brantford is the biggest weak link in the story. A damaged woman (although it isn’t clear why she’s damaged) and a drunk, it stretched credulity that she could work for the SIS. Equally, it is hard to believe Bond doesn’t know who she is; surely they would have met before? The author also sends contradictory signals about her and Bond’s relationship; she at first doesn’t appear interested, neither does Bond, yet they still end up in bed. She is needy, but doesn’t want his help. It is an uneven portrait which leaves us with more questions than answers.
The worst offence in Kate’s make up is her sudden pregnancy. Story-wise this works admirably, but isn’t plausible given nature’s tendency to wait a month rather than a day before revealing impending motherhood. Bond’s reaction doesn’t suggest a man remotely interested in her: he’s more interested in his unborn child than the stability of its mother. His anger is brutal and displays a lack of responsibility rather than an acceptance if it.
For all that, there is a satisfying climax to SMOKEHEART: a wince inducing torture scene, a swift violent death, an almost expected suicide – all beautifully described. Some of Lazenby’s restraint here is laudable. He is prone to be a little too effusive but the final pages are quite stark and much the better for it. SMOKEHEART half works and I like to remember the better half.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080821102049/http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/theswissliason.php
A neat short story, THE SWISS LIAISON is set in 1959 and sees James Bond attending a cocktail party in Berne, a ruse to flush out the SPECTRE agent, Rixel Vice. Putting aside any issues of continuity with Fleming’s novels, this is a sterling piece which with a little refinement could stand very well with the best of Fan Fiction shorts.
The authors, SeanConnery007 and DFFX, have forsaken the internal psychobabble beloved by most writers and presented a straight forward story which tells us what is happening and why and by whom. The characters are well etched, clear caricatures, yes, but all the more visceral because of it. Bond seems to come across as a younger, merely proficient agent, less in tune with some of his colleagues and enjoying looking at the ladies as much as they enjoy looking at him. Twice he uses sleight of hand to further the operation and this is a welcome change to the usual fisticuffs / gadget climaxes we are used to reading.
The little asides about spy craft and spy behaviour were very welcome; they added depth to Bond’s world without suffocating it. The action is short and sweet. There is often a tendency for writers to draw out the violence; the swift ripostes here were refreshing. It was easy to read from start to finish, not glossy and better for it. There is even a splendid and unexpected twist at the end which is the prerequisite of any good short story.
Three things rankled. Most disappointingly, the story lacks a suitably plausible denouement; I really didn’t buy the cigarette lighter sequence, the zippo should have been a Q Branch incendiary device. Secondly, the death of 005 was a bit careless and shows little discretion from a trained hit man. Lastly, it seems unlikely that SPECTRE’s mole would arrive at an embassy function and draw attention to herself by wearing such a drab collection of clothes.
Am I nit-picking? Well, possibly, but when a story has this much potential, and so much that is good about it, these little things do mark the piece. [I am aware that my zippo suggestion contradicts earlier comments, but here it would have made a more acceptable get-out than the one which stands.] THE SWISS LIAISON is a very good story, succinct and to the point.
I liked it a lot. I’d almost give the writers full marks!
I haven't visited this site for ages (mainly because QoS really put me off Bond) but reading this review really took me back, and led me to reread the whole of Obsidian Masquerade.
I enjoyed the collaborative approach to writing but knew that the finished product would lack structure and be inconsistent.
A couple of points;
I created Lissa and she was intended to die early as so many Bond women do - her death was meant to outage the reader and emphasize the importance of finding Obsidian and putting and end to him.
I also wrote the scene where Obsidian beheads his therapist but I had no idea how I was going to write the core trauma at that point and dropped out of the project so never followed through.
The novel was originally intended to be about identity theft but this notion was lost as the project developed.
I did get some really positive feedback about my episodes from some of the other writers and members of ajb007 which was very encouraging as I began a career as a writer.
My own fan fiction. 'Gods Assassin', was my first attempt at a screenplay and is almost embarrassing to look at now. I wish I had time to revise and novelize it but that will have to wait.
thanks for those pointers. They are duly noted.
Forgive me, but I can't remember if Lissa died or not, I'm not sure that was focal to my criticism; my main point I think was about how swift her affair is with Bond and how resourceful she becomes.
I rather enjoyed that bit with the therapist - having ahd a bit of 'treatment' in my time I know exactly how he feels!
Regards identity theft, I still feel that comes across, but perhaps not how you originally envisaged; it has more to do with hidden agenda, hidden secrets, hidden personas.
I am a bit busy elsewhere at the moment (and reviewing 70s Bond for AJB) and have struggled to keep up with my fan fic reading schedule... promise to get back to it soon.
Lissa did not die - I killed her in my original draft but the other collaborators were outraged and so she was only badly hurt. Her death was supposed to counterpoint the gift she gave Bond just before which saved his life - the heart flask that stopped the obsidian dagger. This would have been in the tradition of Paris Carver's death in Tomorrow Never Dies - she gave him vital intel but was then killed for her disloyalty to Carver. This is archetypal Bond stuff.
I have written much FanFic myself for Cbn, but remembered that it was an AJB member, Jason Disley, whose enthusiasm for my short piece 'The Steel Wolf' inspired me to try my hand at writing after a gap of almost 20 years.
Jason has several stories in the AJB archive.
This one can be found at http://web.archive.org/web/20080821102532/http://www.ajb007.co.uk/fanfiction/thegreatchrysanthemum.php
The Great Chrysanthemum
While I have long been a fan of James Bond, my knowledge of Modesty Blaise has only recently become acquired. I really knew very little about Peter O’Donnell’s comic strip heroine until the last three years when I saw both the 1960s and 2000s movies, purchased and read all the novels and borrowed a few graphic books from the library. If I’m brutally honest, I’m not over keen.
I like Modesty Blaise herself as a lead character. She has an interesting emotional make up which was been molded during her formative years. She is an enigma, a polymath and a criminal, yet she is also loyal, vibrant and sensually beautiful. Her adventures though suffer from being repetitive. They also need to accommodate Willie Garvin, Modesty’s right hand man, who sometimes has the best scenes and often gets involved in more rough and tumble than his mistress. His bed-hopping antics are horribly misogynist, deeply insulting and probably a pack of lies. As the series of novels (and comics) progressed a host of supporting characters further muddies the water. All they do is detract from the thoughts and actions of Modesty herself. These shortcomings were never prevalent in James Bond’s [read: Ian Fleming’s] world. There, almost without exception, it is the character of Bond who drives the action, provides the insight and envelops the reader. We are able to become James Bond in a way we cannot become Modesty Blaise. Also, despite being a secret agent, Bond seems humanly susceptible to his foibles; Modesty, while often incarcerated, is not and always has an angle to escape the enemy’s clutches. She is almost unbelievable in that regard. For all that, the novels certainly have some redeeming factors, a smattering of good villains, some highly charged action, worthwhile plots and exotic locations. The best of them are very good [e.g. A Taste for Death] the others so-so. The comic strips I can take or leave.
So I was interested to see what Jason Disley cooked up for his 2005 Super-Spy Mash-Up The Great Chrysanthemum, a novella which sees Ian Fleming’s hero meet Peter O’Donnell’s at some point in the mid-sixties. Bond, I assume, is in pre-Tracy mode, yet to discover love, still married to his Walther PPK. Modesty has just embarked on her spy career. Neither is familiar with the other, at least not on personal terms, although both are aware of the other’s reputation. Mr Disley weaves some magic in the opening chapters. I liked the interplay between the main protagonists. It felt very much like Fleming’s Bond and O’Donnell’s Modesty, definitely his Willie Garvin – even down to the dreadful puns. There was opulence and elegance and intrigue a plenty. The opening gambits were very successful.
Overall however I felt the prose uneven. At times lacked a little bite, yet at others it was too constrained. During the opening salvo this hardly matters as we are introduced swiftly to the plot and the main cast. Later on as the piece continues it becomes a distraction. There are some vivid descriptions of places and history, but the plot and sometimes even the action is hardly dwelt upon. When the story reaches its climax at Piz Bernia, the ensuing firefight is confused and ends in an unsatisfactory fashion. Its resemblance to OHMSS doesn’t do any favours.
This is slightly disappointing as one of the things Mr Disley has got right is the formulaic nature of Peter O’Donnell’s novels. Here, as in those tomes, Modesty is subtly persuaded to hunt for the fabled Great Chrysanthemum, a huge amber diamond stolen in South Africa, by the erstwhile Gerald Tarrant. She allows herself to be seduced and wheedles her way into a villain’s heart, thus gaining access to the prize. She is separated from Willie, worries about him a lot and then, during the climatic rescue, they fight side by side and save each other. It’s all there on the page, line by line. Perhaps without O’Donnell’s flair, but it’s a very accurate impersonation.
I’d only raise two points: Modesty has contacts and houses around the globe so she’d rarely need to use a hotel. Her informants would be quicker than Bond’s. This should have been utilized much more. Also there was a scene where, as she prepares to visit Karl Oppenheimer, the author writes she was ‘unarmed’. This too is incorrect; Modesty is always armed with some little trick or concealed weapon, not least the kongo that doubles as a chignon hair grip.
Bond is rather bland in comparison and does his spying in the traditional manner, packed off by M to investigate the bigger picture: SPECTRE. This angle works well. Indeed in that respect the novella could sit between TSWLM and OHMSS as Bond appears to be hunting down SPECTRE but not to have met Blofeld. Oppenheimer is a ruthless SPECTRE agent; Visser an exploited minion; Red and Blue Dragon two demented killers. They are shadowy unpleasant characters who all share the original authors’ love of the grotesque. I particularly liked the identical twin killers, exactly the sort of thing Fleming would revel in; O’Donnell took it a step further in Sabre-Tooth and made his twins Siamese. Perhaps because the author is trying to cram so much of each character into the novel it sometimes feels overpopulated and convoluted – a common fault with O’Donnell’s tales – and disappointingly James Bond becomes a bit of an onlooker while his new found friends do the heavy work. So it is Modesty who infiltrates the villain’s lair, not once but twice, and Garvin who gets captured and tortured. The resolution seemed a trifle too simple and Bond’s role in it is played out by flashback.
All in all I enjoyed The Great Chrysanthemum. It isn’t a top notch Fan Fiction, but I don’t think that was ever Mr Disley’s intention. This is a fan’s novel, written in the truest tradition of FanFic, and combines two excellent literary characters in a single volume with a host of derring-do to boot. The author shows a nice turn of phrase on occasion and while the text could have used an editor’s polish, it isn’t marred by tedious lengthy descriptions of places, things and fights. It feels about right, maybe a bit too short, but packs in the expected ingredients to the brim.
P.S. A note on Daren Hatfield’s illustrations. They are very good and worth a look on their own and the cover looks like a proper graphic novel’s.
And great to read your fan fiction review. Perhaps you can revive our Fan fiction here on AJB?
stag's Fan Fiction thread:
http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/44578/need-to-know-a-collection-of-short-stories/
More general Fan Fiction thread here:
http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/45017/fan-fiction/