Moonraker

shockingly good, especially because I had a lot of issues with casino royale, and I really, really didn't like live and let die. talking about all the retrograde things in bond is sort of like stepping in shit on purpose, so I'll skip that part, but disclaimer: moonraker is still sexist and silly. it's still james bond, lol.

there's a steady approach to the prose here that I appreciate. while the close third person is usually focused on bond, it'll deftly switch or expand its perspective, feeling almost like narrativization of a documentary. in his previous work, fleming stayed completely on bond's perspective. this shift becomes incredibly interesting as the novel commits to a transposing of a newscast during its denouement—it's a very distant, and unorthodox way to wrap up a story. the story's anxiety about new technologies is present in its diction, its choice of symbols, and strongly within setpieces like these. there is a keen sense of helplessness as the protagonists are helpless to achieve any more effect, stuck listening to the radio's guidance like every other person.

hugo drax is also a very fun, strongly plotted character. [here come the big spoilers]. while technically another soviet super spy (lol) he pulls of a scheme that rivals and goes beyond the stuff bond has done up to this point. his identity is this big clusterfuck. he is a half-british, half-german neo-nazi fanatic. he is disfigured in WWII during a spy mission and is rescued by the allies. they can't positively identify him, so they offer him a pick of missing persons. drax makes a big show of being one of them. no more questions asked. he makes a fortune extorting british companies (legally), comes back with an wild plan to create an interstellar nuke, for the small price of employing a bunch of ex-nazi scientists, and britain, in their greed for power, agrees to this.

drax, of course, aims the super nuke at london. their greed rewarded with self-destruction. the implications I think are obvious. so obvious that at fleming must have strongly disapproved of the rehabilitation of nazis (a pretty fair position to have after the blitz, and in general, I think).

drax lays some of the rot of historical white britishness bare. that obsession with wealth and power, tempered only by a facade of decorum. he seems to say—of course you morons are vulnerable to nazi infiltration. he mocks bond, as bond becomes a superheroic stand in for britain, saying that as long as drax acts like the proper gentlemen, and has buckets of money, he can do anything in this country, and he has done just that. to stay alive, bond needles drax like a schoolboy, provoking the man's rage (and dulling his senses): bond acts unsightly, dropping any pretense of acting by those rules, though he can't really be blamed for it.

of course, the novel sort of brushes this conflict between old and new masculinity aside as a kind of freak coincidence, a mere contest of wills. reading in 2024, I know better. I can see the anxiety clearly.