these Young Bond books were quick reads, so I just kept going and made notes afterwards:
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Young Bond volume 2: Blood Fever
The scale of this one is huge, moreso than most of the films. After some brief scenes at Eton, introducing Bond's new club the Danger Society, the scene changes to Sardinia, where Young Bond accompanies a school trip studying archaeology. There he crosses paths with a villain with ties to Mussolini, who models himself on the Caesars and has built a palazzo high in the mountains complete with working aqueduct. There are also art thieves who have kidnapped a schoolgirl (Amy Goodenough), travels with backwoods bandits, and a visit to a surrealist's artist studio.
This volume continues the graphic blood and gore of the previous volume, with a villain walking round with a gangrenous knife wound til the very last pages.
There is also a secondary Young Bondgirl in this volume, literally named Vendetta, one of the bandits who is basically a savage. Both Bondgirls are very capable though, as primary Bondgirl Amy Goodenough is herself responsible for the villain's festering knife wound in the very first chapter.
(Amy is fought over by two competing villains, who each propose to sell her in the white slave trade then decide to keep her for themselves, yet it is never stated precisely what these villains intend to do with their teenage prize. This is left to our sordid adult imaginations, but rather creepy for a childrens book.)
A lot of the imagery is more Tintin than Harry Potter (which in my opinion is a better source of inspiration), including the art thieves, the archaeology, and especially that scene in the surrealist's studio.
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Young Bond volume 3: Double or Die
This time we tour Eton, Cambridge, and all across London, especially the poverty stricken East End. The reality of the Great Depression is important here, as is the lure of Communism.
Towards the end, there is revealed to be a forgotten network of tunnels that crisscrosses london, foreshadowing SkyFall.
Red Kelly reappears, along with the whole Kelly clan, including little sister Kelly Kelly, who is the Bondgirl of the adventure. Bond and Kelly Kelly even sleep together, although it's not what you think.
There are cameos by real life historic figures Alan Turing and Dutch Schultz. The attempts at early computing are central to the plot (there is a good explanation of Babbage's Difference Engine), and computing's actual origins are correctly shown to be direct function of spywork.
Also Bond learns to gamble, and visits his first casino. And gets drunk for the first time, which, as with smoking in the first book, is represented as highly dangerous, not glamourous at all.
And there's a lot more graphic gore and grotesqueries. A particular highlight is the visit to the museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, where Bond studies a room full of freak specimens preserved in jars, while his pal Perry sits through an educational lecture on plastic surgery restoration of war injuries.
Also: Bond does indeed purchase a Bentley nearly new in 1933 (actually it's a wreck), making that sentence in Casino Royale correct after all.
(EDIT: I just realised the discovery of a wrecked racing car, and the decision to purchase and restore it, is near identical to the opening of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!)
This book again has the problem of scale that undermines Fleming's books. The extended finale at the London Docks is actually closer to the Spy Who Loved Me (film) than anything Fleming wrote.
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Young Bond volume 4: Hurricane Gold
Thankfully no Eton content in this volume, except for a set of letters between chapters that Young Bond never gets the chance to read.
Bond accompanies Aunt Charmian on a trip to Palenque but gets seperated in hurricane, and spends the rest of the book travelling in circles round Mexico with Precious Stone, a spoiled little rich girl who has lost everything. The two of them must escape the criminals who robbed her father's house, then instead decide to track those same criminals down to recover a set of stolen military plans.
The description of the hurricane and the flooded village are excellent. The scenes in Palenque come and go too fast, but that's OK because there's another villain who captures them in the end with his own set of Mayan ruins, and these are explored.
And again theres the gag of a vilain who is hideously injured early on, and just keeps walking round dropping body parts for a couple hundred more pages. Variations of this recur in Volumes 2, 3, and 4.
Much of the appeal of this volume is the story of Precious Stone, who undergoes a sort of reverse Pygmalion process, gradually evolving from pampered brat into a rough and tumble survivor, the kind of female character that Fleming celebrated. Young Bond ends up liking her very much, but he has remade her in his own image.
one thing about the ending...
Spoiler...Bond has agreed to keep secret the existence of a criminals retirement colony in exchange for his freedom. It seems non-credible he keep this secret into his maturity, especially once he is employed by MI6. Hurrikan, the villain who runs this colony, is hardly the kind of charming rogue Fleming's Bond would occassionally team up with.
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"A Hard Man to Kill" - short story
I haven't read this one. It is included in a supplemental volume entitled Danger Society. There is a very brief excerpt in Volume 5, continuing the story from the previous volume as Bond and Aunt Charmian return home on an ocean liner. I gather from comments online that Wilder Lawless, from Volume 1, reappears.
Last edited by caractacus potts (5th May 2020 23:47)