I just read a review of this. 700 pages! Is it good?
Haven’t really started yet, but the authors have written about other franchises brilliantly!
Curious to know how it stacks up to Some Kind of Hero…
Strange. Where did you order it? I’m still waiting and Amazon England says release date 1 March and delivery estimate 7-9 March.
Now I’m a bit further in this, I feel better about giving an opinion - It’s very good. It’s very much taking Conan Doyle’s central narrative style to tell a fictional story as if he’s relaying real events (complete with the fictional detective not liking the way the story is being written) but takes it to an extreme, on an almost Tristram Shandy level, by having a fictional version of Horowitz being dragged along the mystery by the very Holmesian (and very fictional) PD, Daniel Hawthorne. It is very meta textual but a very engaging read - if you enjoyed Horowitz’ two Holmes novels, particularly Moriarty, you will enjoy this.
Finished “The Institute”. Quite good, well edited, focusing King on essentials. The idea for the story is interesting, a timeless “Twilight Zone”-like concept. And, of course, it is expertly written as a page turner, with a strong finale and ending.
However, for my taste, it is almost too simplistic in its narrative, a very straightforward story with less twists than I hoped for. And a lot is revealed in very long dialogue scenes which I would have preferred to be divided up in smaller sections throughout the book, with more action revealing it.
All in all - not a bad King book but also not one of the great ones.
To illustrate my opinion, here’s my Top Ten King books ranking:
- Pet Semetary
- Salem´s Lot
- The Shining
- The Dead Zone
- Christine
- Misery
- Cujo
- The Stand
- 11/22/63
- The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
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Just re-read FYEO, Octopussy and now Golden Gun.
Curious in that the story element of Property of a Lady is referenced at the beginning of Golden Gun, but that, book-wise, this story was published later…
Have also read Red Notice.
A factual account of an Investor’s truly frightening journey from having invested in Russia and thence later, finding himself out of favour with Putin. Being out of favour with this guy leads to unimaginable horrors at the sharp end of the Special Police, basically a band of ex thugs and criminals being granted police powers.
Reads like fiction so terrifying it is.
I was completely incapable of putting it down. Sleep was the only reason that lead to it being put down - albeit temporarily.
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I believe it was written earlier and was never intended for publication in a book, only being published that way after Fleming’s death. And even then, wasn’t included in the original printing of Octopussy and The Living Daylights.
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Oh sure, was aware PoaL was published I think in a Sotherby’s journal or some such, and Playboy.
Was just a curious turn of events that something was referenced that the wider reading populace at the time might not have read.
Am sure a wife of the 60’s for example would have been just delighted to have Playboy sitting on top of her Homes and Garden in the lounge…
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By the way, I absolutely love all of his short story collections - the man is a genius just based on those, in particular Dolan’s Cadillac,1408, The Thing they left Behind (beautiful haunting 9/11 tribute), Autopsy Room 4, Survivor Type, Trucks, In the Deathroom and The Mist.
My favourite Stephen King novels.
The Running Man
It
The Stand
The Long Walk
Under the Dome
Sleeping Beauties
Dreamcatcher
Gerald’s Game
The Dead Zone
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I’ve begun Licence Renewed. I’ve never done a proper read through of the Gardner novels, having only ever read For Special Services (which I hated), and Icebreaker (which was okay).
Good luck. I can count on one hand the Gardner’s that I considered worth my time.
EDIT: And I read and own every single one.
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It’s a fun read. Not necessarily Fleming, but Bondian enough. No Deals, Mr. Bond was probably my favorite of Gardner’s first seven novels.
I would agree that it is a better one, though I haven’t read it since its publication in 1987.
I’ve only ever read 2 Gardner novels, but wasn’t super impressed with either. Last year, I did a marathon read of Fleming + all of the Fleming timeline set continuation novels, starting with Forever and a Day and ending with James Bond and Moonraker (I didn’t include James Bond: The Authorized Biography as I don’t consider it canon though I did include the released pages of Per Fine Ounce). I had a blast with it. I’m not expecting to have as much fun this time around.
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Why start then?
New Bond stories that I haven’t experienced yet.
I´ve started “Nobody does it better: the complete, uncensored, unauthorized oral history of James Bond” - and it is as enjoyable as the other oral histories these authors have compiled through interviews (on Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, for example). The interview format works because it brings together many different views on the films and how they were made.
Now, if you have read a lot about the Bond movies before a lot may be too familiar to really surprise you.
However - I’m now starting the THUNDERBALL chapter - I did not read before that in the editing room EON was scared that Hamilton had delivered a lackluster movie and that Young stepped in to re-edit with Peter Hunt. Young even claims (which must be wrong due to the McClory situation) that EON thought they should release THUNDERBALL first and then GOLDFINGER as a kind of additional feature.
These days, people seem to dislike GOLDFINGER a bit, due to Bond being captured (something Connery criticized, too), and Hunt restructured the narrative in order to have the capture take place much later than planned. I do love GOLDFINGER, however, and the reaction of audiences worldwide also told EON that Hamilton had made a gigantic hit. Still, behind the scenes it was a pretty tense situation.
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CURSED BOND MOVIE!!!
Insiders say everyone is scared, with Connery demanding Young be reinstated!
To put it through the tabloid crap filter Craig’s films have had.
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Hunt disdained Hamilton’s work–he felt that it was uneditable. What he did not realize was that Hamilton–like Mankiewicz, Ford, and others–cut in the camera, so often there was not a lot of footage for Hunt to work with–he could not create the film in the editing process (and Hunt’s visual sense was quite different from Hamilton’s to say the least).
Tom Mankiewicz said Hamilton was the most cynical man he ever met (and would have been disastrous as director of the Superman movie which he was hired to helm). I think this cynicism (in a diluted form) is part of his Bond films. In GOLDFINGER, a) Bond gets captured; b) his actions lead to the death of two women; and c) he tries brute force with the bomb and watches while someone else simply turns it off. These actions are counter-balanced by a) Bond stripping off a wetsuit to reveal a dinner jacket; b) Bond beating Goldfinger at golf; and c) Bond being Bondian in the generally accepted Connery fashion. Hamilton also delivers the most cynical Bond via Roger Moore in TMWTGG.
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