About this title: This story features the character of James Bond. Bond is the victim of a plot by Colonel Sun of the People's Liberation Army of China. M has been abducted, but Bond appears to be the target of this plot to discredit the British Secret Service.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Eighth Printing By This Publisher.
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Pan Books Limited, London, England, Great Britain, UK
Date Published: 1974
Description: PHOTO Cover. Good. Mass Market Paperback. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" Tall. 221 pages. >>> British novelist Kingsley Amis picks up where legendary author Ian Fleming left off with this Bond novel of political conspiracy, elegant espionage, international intrigue, and, of course, beautiful alliances. 007 must rescue the kidnapped M and save the Free World from evil Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the People's Liberation Army of China. After Ian Fleming's death in 1964, Glidrose Publishing decided to continue the ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Pan Books Limited, London
Date Published: 1970
ISBN-13:9780330023047ISBN:0330023047
Description: Fair. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Reading creases on spine, some shelf wear/rubbing to the cover edges and surface, mainly on the spine egdes, and some creasing to the back cover corners. A heavy tan and some foxng (spotting) to the page edges. Despite the faults, the book is still tight and very much intact, the pages are extremely clean and there are no inscriptions. All my books are carefully packed and I make every effort to despatch orders the same day. If you have any questions regarding this ... read more
Edition: Third Edition
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Pan Books Limited, London, England, Great Britain, UK
Date Published: 1970
Description: PHOTO Cover. FINE+, Near New. Mass Market Paperback. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" Tall. 221 pages. >>> British novelist Kingsley Amis picks up where legendary author Ian Fleming left off with this Bond novel of political conspiracy, elegant espionage, international intrigue, and, of course, beautiful alliances. 007 must rescue the kidnapped M and save the Free World from evil Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the People's Liberation Army of China. After Ian Fleming's death in 1964, Glidrose Publishing decided to ... read more
Description: Very Good. 0061005681 Mass Market Paperback, Condition: Very Good; this book is in very good condition with light curve to the spine / light reading creases to the covers. read more
Edition: Book Club
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Companion Book Club (Hamyln Publishing), London
Date Published: 1968
Description: Near Fine in Good+ jacket. Hardback. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Imitation leather binding, endpaper maps. Dust jacket is worn at the corners, lightly tanned at the spine. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: The Companion Book Club
Date Published: 1968
Description: Very Good. Decent hardback copy, without dustwrapper. No major defects-unabridged, clean, complete, not falling apart; some light wear. A perfectly good reading or reference copy. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books
Date Published: 1969
Description: Like New. Near fine copy, truly unusual. Free, automatic1st class upgrade for books under 14 ounces. Free Priority upgrade to all domestic orders over $20.00. Satisfaction guaranteed. read more
Edition: First US Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Harper Row, New York
Date Published: 1968
Description: Good + No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Sunned pine with gilt titling, spine is cocked, minor soil and and 2 small marks on front cover, some fading on top rear cover. Pencilled price on rear pastedown, small spot on front pastedown. remainder spray on page tops, some pages with minor distress on page bottoms, deckle edge pages, no other internal markings. Book is solid and tight. The James Bond legend carries on. read more
Binding: HARDCOVER
Publisher: The Companion Book Club
Date Published: 1968
Description: Collectible; VG. Hardcover, Companion Book Club edition, book and dust jacket in near fine condition. Your book will be securely packed and promptly dispatched from our UK warehouse. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Jonathan Cape, London
Date Published: 1968
Description: FIRST EDITION. Publisher's hardback cloth in pictorial dustwrapper. Wraparoiund art by Tom Adams. Book is fine but for one splashmark to top edge. Wrapper is good-very good with some rubbing and abrasion to spine tips, some fraying and tears to same. remains a presentable copy. The first post-Ian Fleming James Bond novel. Haining; Crime Fiction p206. BMC No.1 p.4-13 'James Bond Rivivals'. Hubin; Crime Fiction IV. read more
"How can we possibly go wrong when Kingsley Amis takes his best crack at writing his own 007 story? The Kinger's rendition fits ably into the Fleming canon. To answer your other question, no, I have no intention of moving along to read any of the other continuation novels, none of which were written by Amis, and none of which garnered his approval. There was a long silence between the publication of Colonel Sun in 1968 and License Renewed by John Gardner in 1981. If Amis' rejection of Gardner's books is not enough to persuade you to avoid them, consider Philip Larkin's concurrence. Their unanimous condemnation of Gardner's Bond books as "sodding tame" ought to keep you from them forever.
There is a lot of fun here for fans of both Bond and of Amis, and for you weirdos who enjoy both this will be indispensable reading. I doubt anyone could have been as well prepared as KA for the task of taking up the mantle so recently laid down by the dead Fleming in the late '60's. Since Amis was fresh off several successes with his own "serious" novels as well as two books covering the Bond phenomenon, the project was a natural. Even as Fleming was expiring, the firm he had established for the promotion and protection of all things Bond was laying plans for continuation novels to be published under the collective pseudonym Robert Markham, to be written under by rotating authors. Ultimately, and for reasons which remain unclear, neither Amis nor anyone else was ever enlisted to be Markham again. Glidrose still handles all of the rights and distribution for the James Bond brand. A final weird note along these lines: in 2008, to celebrate Fleming's centenary, a new continuation novel was published by Sebastian Faulks writing "as Ian Fleming" (whatever that means.) Throughout the promotional coverage of the novel, titled Devil May Care, it was implied that no new Bond book had appeared since Fleming's own final book in 1966. I understand the publishers' desire to ignore the Gardner books as well as those of several other thriller hacks who succeeded him, but to call Faulks' book the first new Bond in a while was a stretch of the public imagination to challenge the schemes of Hugo Drax. Post-Fleming iterations of Bond have been published by no less than five different writers. What they likely meant was that Faulks' story was the first since Fleming's death to feature Bond resuming his "normal" '60's timeline, and such a claim would be far closer to the truth. However, it still blatantly ignores Colonel Sun. In the first chapter, Amis makes it clear that this is the same James who only a year ago faced off with Scaramanga in the Jamaican jungle to get his spurs back from M, the same Bond who is now rotting slightly from the soft London life and craving a new assignment. When M is kidnapped while invaliding at home, it's Bond to the rescue.
One and done was the right amount of 007 novels for Amis. He obviously had a lot of other great books to write around the time he finished Sun. An amusing fact for Nashvillians: Sun was composed mainly during Amis' brief tenure as a writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University in Nashville."
"I read all of the Fleming books years ago, when I worked in the closed stacks of a major metropolitan public library. Yes, it's true I can file in Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress :-)
Anyway, for those who don't have a clue, most of the Bond movies are only "loosely" modeled on the books. Hey, it was a big deal back in the 60's that "Goldfinger" was the first instance of an industrial laser (even if it was a fake) in a major motion picture. ("Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.")
So there have been a bunch of follow-on Bond novels (which are separate from the novelizations of the latter-day movies). They are not always great, but generally are more grounded in reality than the movies. The book was a good example of the former. Written at the choice of the author, Kingsley Amis. Could probably make a good movie.
P.S. Although I have not seen it, the re-make of Casino Royale is supposed to be much closer to the novel (including the brutal caning of the genitals epsiode.) If you don't know the long history of how the original Casino Royale was a farce and how "Never, Say Never Again" got made, close the computer, pick up this book and enjoy."
"For those that have not read Fleming's Bond books, you're in for a surprise! They're nothing like the movies. True, some of the early movies follow the books reasonably well plot wise, but they've never, even with my favorite Bond, Sean Connery, managed to give us the character. The current Bond is probably the closest. The plots are usually very simple, with no super secret spy gadgets.
Colonel Sun, in some ways has the simple plot down, and Bond is not the cock sure character that he is in the films. The plot is a bit more involved than the Fleming books tend to be, and indeed there is a plot that will have global ramifications, but it's not the "madman take over the world" thing that they do in the films. If anything, our antagonist is a bit of a letdown!
But all that said, I must say that I thought Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis) did a good job and I'm a bit surprised that he wrote no other Bond books, nor did anyone else for over a decade. As Bond writers go, I'd place Amis second on my list of Bond writers.
A really good read, so don't let the 3 stars fool you into thinking otherwise, it's just that a scale of 1 to 5 doesn't leave much room for the "cream of the crop.""
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