Sherwood has a Bond connection: she is the granddaughter of the actor George Baker who made a number of appearances in the James Bond films. With the famous 007 missing, and plenty of other 00s on the scene - 003, 004, 008, 009 - the amount of characters were hard to keep up with.

Baker most famously playing Sir Hilary Bray in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), appeared as a NASA engineer in You Only Live Twice (1967) and he appeared in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). Sherwood is a self-professed fan of Fleming’s books and succeeds in making her original characters matter, which is the hallmark of all good fan fiction. This book takes place in the world of 007 but he does not take any active part in the story, no white knight as James Bond. Convoluted, drawn out, complicated and be sure to keep it very modern with same sex , black , deaf , equal opportunities etc etc. It was longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize and shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Pick.

There is a limited attempt to reconcile the time line, but all of the back story references to Bond are of a timeless nature where he is now in his mid-40s even if an actual person living all of the events back to and before 1953 would likely be in his 90s by now. There’s M of course, but I won’t spoil it for readers by revealing others who the book contains or references to past Bond adventures. Unlike the Anthony Horowitz novel which I read earlier this year, this is more of a spin off series, rather than a continuation of the Bond novels. Our other featuring 00 is gay, so a very slight sense that boxes are being ticked to bring the intelligence services into 2022.

James Bond is hier enkel een platte commerciële truk om een grotere verkoop te realiseren en van de franchise om wij de woke-beweging aan te sluiten. BROWSE BY: FILM | ACTOR | PRODUCT | NO TIME TO DIE | GIFT GUIDE | ROAD TO A MILLION NEW When you purchase through links on this site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Kim Sherwood is an author and creative writing lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, where she lives in the city. This Moneypenny is drawn more from the recent Daniel Craig era of the 007 film world, where Moneypenny herself was once a Double 00. The majority of it is clearly contemporary and yet Q is now a (bizarrely large) quantum computer (a bad idea robbing us of character interplay) as is the "brain" of the antagonist. The reveal and cliffhanger ending has me on the edge of my seat for the next entry in this planned trilogy. The modernity gives the opportunity to have a more diverse cast of characters in terms of race and sex, which is a good thing, but it feels like the author is using diversity to differentiate between the characters instead of fully delineating the characters.

Sherwood] rises impressively to all the challenges of the formula — the cliffhangers, the exotic locations, the wry specificity about lifestyle and weaponry brands, the blend of “kiss kiss” and “bang bang” — while adding ideas such as making Q a quantum computer and putting the climate crisis at her remarkable thriller’s centre. Growing up, 007 films were my favourite, so when I was gifted an e-arc of this book I couldn’t say no. When a slippery billionaire claims he can reverse the climate crisis and James Bond has been captured by enemy forces, a trio of MI6's finest agents are sent to investigate in this pulsating spy thriller set in the world of 007. Some of the action was tortuous and unconvincing and I’m not referring to the actual torture scenes. De spanning bestaat uit martelscenes die bij de echte Bond verhalen impliciet waren en hier expliciet getekend worden.I really liked the plot as it is well structured and the detailed descriptions are giving a cinematic feel. The first in a planned trilogy, and as a Bond completist, I will probably soldier on to the next one in the hope it improves.