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It's an ordinary afternoon. I have been busy doing a lot of something. I can point to a list of all the things I accomplished on beehiiv and the website, SEO, blah blah... but it's felt like much of nothing.
The nights are longer, the toes are colder, but I am warmed by the hot black Yorkshire Gold loose leaf in our late Nan's Burberry mug. Ergonomically, it is luxury.
In the breaks, I have been devouring King Zero. I'm not finished yet, I've just started Chapter 31, but it is shaping up to be one of my favourites. It is gritty, it pushes the envelope. Parts of it read like gruesome horror. I'm getting a signed copy in Penarth next Sunday, so the audiobook will have to do.
There's a bit with some hyenas and big cats... no spoilers, but sheesh. That and the sharks have pushed the genre. This is way more gore and horror than anything that's come before it, but the way terror is described is brilliant. And I'm excited about it. I even felt a bit uncomfortable, and I was prewarned.
It has me thinking back on the continuation novels that came before it.
Fleming wrote a cruel Bond. An angry bastard. King Zero leans into that but keeps him compelling. Before this I read On His Majesty's Secret Service. If that Bond felt a bit more Moore, this is exactly the angriest Connery. William Boyd's Solo carried some of this, with the South African mercenary hanging people from fish hooks as a tactic of war, and Carte Blanche was very Zero Dark Thirty.
So what earns a continuation novel the name?
What makes a continuation novel qualify as Bond, as Fleming's vision? Well, simply, I live my life the Bond way. The Bond in a continuation novel has to carry the torch properly. John Gardner wrote some fun, wacky stuff back in the '80s, but I think I'm already more stylish than his interpretation. If "don't do anything I wouldn't do" was a series, it'd be that one.
I only started reading Fleming and the Bond books slightly over two years ago. Now, unprompted, I have people in my life, and randoms, addressing me as "Bond"... which is great. The first time it happened was an old work colleague, and it's happened a great many times since. I've stopped correcting them.
My favourite continuation novel will likely always be 1968's Colonel Sun by Kingsley Amis. Amis was close enough to the source that Fleming's publishers paid him to read The Man with the Golden Gun before it went to print, and the whispers about who had a hand in what have followed him ever since. But for plot and themes that deserved their place on screen, look no further. Spectre lifted its torture scene almost word for word, and the Amis estate is thanked in the credits.
Bond continuation novels must be Fleming, without the dated attitudes of his time.
I'm properly getting into these chapters now. My tea's gone cold. I'm wondering why...
The full King Zero review lands this week.