REVIEW 2: Casino Royale

Finally! Bond is finally being Bond and there is action and drama on every page. The book is night and day. I said in my first review of part one of the book that it was slow and lots of background details. It was necessary and it was worth it.

                One of my favorite things I’ve ever read in a book is the scene where Bond plays Le Chiffre in a game of baccarat and everything depends on the game. It is very confrontational and Fleming does an excellent job of creating tension within the scene. Because this is a blog that focuses on books made into movies, I want to point out that the tension Fleming creates on the pages is harder to create on the screen. I will watch the 2006 version of Casino Royale when I’m done with the book. But I can predict that Hollywood doesn’t get it done the way Fleming does. And this is an advantage books have. The author can take pages and pages to create the tension of a scene that takes a minute in a movie.

                One thing I love in a story is when the ‘inevitable’ hero fails. Bond loses the baccarat game which leaves him bankrupt. He has to report that he failed the mission, until he gains help from a CIA agent who give him an envelope full of money. And all of a sudden the story is going back in forth and each chapter the tension spikes and then ends with a twist. My favorite kind of story.