"Casino Royale" Book Review

Well, I've finished "Casino Royale," the first of Ian Fleming's Bond novels.  It didn't take me very long to read it, really.  I appreciated that, since I often seem to gravitate to books that end up being long, and I'm not the world's fastest reader.  If the Bond novels tend to be on the shorter side as a rule, that'll be a plus!

My initial impression of "Casino Royale" is that it's very good.  There are aspects of it that are very strong, and the final third or so of the book verges on greatness.  But I'm not sure that overall it felt as seamless as it could have, or that Fleming communicates all the ideas he wants to convey as clearly as he intends.  It felt like I was reading a debut novel.  I don't mean that as too much of a criticism.  Fleming's natural talent for writing is clearly on display, but it seemed he wasn't yet in full command of his storytelling powers.  Still, for a first novel, it's pretty impressive.  I could even sense ambition in parts of the book, particularly in Fleming's efforts to create some complexity in his characterizations.

Regarding Fleming's writing style, on the plus side it felt lean and clear.  The tone also felt even throughout.  Fleming seems to be adept with language, and there is a certain precision to his word choices and descriptions that I admired.  On the negative end, the writing often comes across as bland.  Occasionally a sentence might contain a nice turn of phrase, but mostly the prose is straightforward and lacking much in the way of feeling.  There are some spots where Fleming gets a bit more reflective and philosophical, and I like those passages a lot.  

Most of the character work in the book impressed me.  Fleming seems to have a knack for writing believable and fairly engaging dialogue, and he did a good job conveying Bond's thoughts and internal experiences.

I was less enamored with the novel's plot, which didn't grab me right away.  To be honest, I wasn't very involved in the story at all until probably a third of the way through.  And even when I started to get more involved, it wasn't until the torture scene that the book finally became compelling enough to not want to put down.  From that point on, I basically loved the rest of the novel. 

I liked the book well enough, but a certain mild feeling of disappointment did color my reading experience.  The reason for this is because, more or less the whole time, I couldn't help but mentally compare what I was reading to the 2006 film adaptation.  It's hard to say how I'd have felt about the book without already being familiar with the movie.  To be honest, I think the film version is so much richer and more involving than the novel it's kind of astonishing.  The suspense, action, and even the romance all work substantially better in the movie.  This is definitely a case of a film being a significant improvement over its source material.



Still, that's not to say that the elements don't work fairly well in the novel.  They do.  It's all mostly persuasive, even if it doesn't have as much depth as I hoped for.  Perhaps my biggest wish for the novel is that Fleming would have devoted more focus to the relationship stuff.  It might have given the ending more of a punch. (This is where having seen the movie first poses a particular challenge.  Would the ending of the novel been more impactful had I not known what was going to happen?  I suppose it would have.) Fleming seems very interested in a variety of elements in the setting, background, and general plot, and so his focus is broad, and he spends a good amount of time exploring and explaining things that are less gripping to me than the action and romance.  For example, there were stretches of writing related to the story's gambling component that I struggled with.  I could sense that Fleming himself was fascinated by this, and enjoyed elaborating on it, but I'm not sure he did a great job persuading his audience to join in on whatever fun he was having.   

Regarding the character of Bond, I have read that Fleming wanted him to seem bland and uninteresting.  I don't know much about his reasoning for this; perhaps I'll try to research that more.  Regardless, if that was Fleming's intention, then he succeeded, because Bond is not a particularly intriguing or appealing character in this book.  Certainly he lacks the charm and likeability we've come to associate with him through the film series.  I will be very interested to see how Bond evolves over future novels.  Will there be, for example, more fun and humor in other books as the series progresses?  I wonder.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had been told that the Fleming novels are fairly serious and realistic.  I was happy to discover that "Casino Royale" felt that way to me.  Like I've said, I generally prefer my Bond to be dark, tough, and serious.  If those traits continue to be a hallmark of the Fleming novels, I'll be a happy fan indeed.