Maybe it makes Bond more human to know that he sometimes lives a life that isn’t all too different from our own, and that he too doesn’t always get the girl in the end, he doesn’t always get exotic locales, and stay in the finest hotels. Leaving the book in England gives it more of a gritty feel to me, and fleshes out the series and the character more by showing us the details of his day-to-day life. But as the public’s hunger for Bond grew, he began to flesh out the character more, making him more human, and less of the hard case blunt instrument that Fleming originally envisioned.

Early on in the series, Fleming spoke and wrote about wanting Bond to be an undetermined character, so that the reader could easily place himself into the protagonist’s role. What strikes me with Moonraker is that Fleming must have decided at this point to abandon his “Bond as an everyman” approach and actually began to delve into Bond’s character more, giving us details of his England, his job, his flat, his life, that had been denied to us previously. Moonraker ‘Moonraker’ reviewed by… clinkeroo Part II to follow on the CBn main page shortly. For further details on the club or to post your own review of Moonraker, simply click here. What follows are selected reviews from the Book Club Forum members. Proceeding in chronological order, the club first read Fleming’s Moonraker back in May 2004.

With 2008 marking the centenary of Ian Fleming, the newest review series, Literary 007 Reviewed, now continues with the author’s third James Bond adventure, 1955’s Moonraker.Īs several CBn Forum members are already aware, every two months a James Bond adventure is chosen for members of the Blades Library Book Club to read.

Moonraker fleming