 You may have seen all Bond films countless times, maybe even checked out the unofficial ones that weren't produced by Eon Productions. You may have played the classic 007 video games, read countless books on old things James Bond, but have you really, really gone back to the source as a fan? Have you read the James Bond novels? All fans all know it started right over here on Goldeneye Jamaica, the spiritual home of Bond. Overlooking the lagoon and a private beach, Eon Fleming created the spy thrillers to end all spy thrillers on a typewriter in the corner of his bedroom. Eon Fleming would write 14 James Bond novels between 1953 and his death in 1964, with his last novel being published a year after his death. Though the cinematic Bond is based on the literary Bond, the cinematic Bond would end up living a life of its own, and the original one on the page is completely separate. But you may be aware his adventures are still going too. It's not just the Bond on the screen, countless writers have taken on the role to continue the adventures of the Bond on the page too. After Fleming died, Kingsley Amis wrote a continuation novel called Coulnill's Son. John Gardner took over in the 1980s, writing countless adventures of an age 007, only for Raymond Benson to take over the mantle and reset it all with more Bond novels. The same holds for other authors keeping literary Bond going like Sebastian Faulks, Jeffrey Dever, William Boyd and as of the making of this video, Anthony Horowitz is putting in his share of work. Though similar to the cinematic Bond, the world of Fleming's Bond is for the most part a lot darker and grittier. The Bond on the page would certainly live through unbelievable adventures and meet extraordinary women, sip martinis and drive fast cars too like his cinematic counterpart but mostly Fleming's world is down to earth, set and written in the midst of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, which in parts have certainly aged the books, but mostly you truly get to experience the blunt instrument wielded by the government with a license to kill at its very basis and a lot of that is simply timeless. Long story short, there is a lot to dive into with literary Bond and I'm first to admit I only read most of the Fleming novels and read just one of the continuation novels, so I'm incredibly excited to delve deeper into the world of the original James Bond of the books and wear more fitting than to start at the very, very first James Bond novel ever written, Ian Fleming's Casino Royale. Casino Royale takes place in a fictional town called Royal Les Eux, set in the north of France and described to be just north of Jeppe. If you have to point to a real life town in a very similar location fitting the description of the town the most, you would probably come out at the French town of Caberg, also having a classic French casino and a grand hotel similar to the one that Bond is staying in. The book introduces us to the Russian counterintelligence organization that Bond takes on in most of the early novels called Smurfs, or as the Russians say, Smash or Smirtspionam. And one of its members is Lechif, this book's villain who put a lot of the organization's funds into brothels, only for them to be closed down by the French police. In order for him to win back the funds, he plans on playing a high stakes game of Baccarat in the town's Casino Royale. Enter the British Secret Server's best card player, Agent James Bond 007. So Bond has to try and bankrupt Lechif in a game of cards. This was based on a real life experience that Fleming had playing cards in a casino in Portugal. So Bond is on a mission to go face to face with a Russian agent, an under the table battle between East and West with the card table as their decor. And as uninteresting as it sounds, it's really written splendidly and suspenseful. You know how everyone has their own interpretation of what characters look like when reading a book? People often ask me, so which Bond actor do you visualize? Well, actually I don't visualize any of the actors playing in the movie's counterpart. Instead, let me completely surprise you, my literary Bond looks something like this. You may have no clue that this is the main character of the video game Mafia 2 and you may wonder why on earth I would picture this dude as Bond. But it's the fact that he has that same classic 1940s and 1950s look and many of the features described by Fleming. The dark, well-groomed hair, the dashingly handsome look, the cold eyes, and my personal favorite, this character happens to have the scar on the cheek just like Bond has in the novels and he just always comes to mind. Fleming immediately introduces us to his cold hero. The Bond of the books is very observant, always considering all angles and situations, a heavy smoker, charming, sophisticated, sometimes a bit moody, a complete professional taking his job serious, putting a hair on his cabinet in the hotel room and talcum powder on his briefcase. The greatest thing about literary Bond is that you get to read what's going on inside Bond's head. He's a very introspective character and maybe you would argue that some of his world views haven't aced well. As he drove, whipping the car faster and faster through the night, with the other half of his mind he cursed Vesper and M for having centre on the job. This was just what he had been afraid of, these blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mine their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men? You see, yes, this was written in the 1950s, but Bond has always been a conservative man, a traditional man's man, so to speak. And I honestly enjoy that his character is far from perfect, but a lot of it is honestly very relatable. Right after getting tortured for example and having his genitals beaten up, Bond is having a swim and is questioning whether or not he still functions properly down there. This, as a man, is very likely exactly what I would be wondering as well. I find him relatable. And you notice that unlike his cinematic incarnation, he also gets to go through a lot of self-doubt and a character development after the torture. Throughout the story, Bond is also aided by René Mathis of the French Deuxième Bureau and I can't help but visualise Jean-Renaud in this part. He always comes to mind when reading about Mathis in the novels. They cast it some doubt whether or not Mathis can be trusted in a 2006 movie, but in the novel there is none of that. Mathis mostly serves as an experienced agent, aiding Bond and talking sense into him in some great passages after the torture sequence in the hospital, where there is a great discussion between Bond and Mathis talking about the sides of good and evil. The villains and heroes get all mixed up. Of course, he added, patriotism comes along and makes it seem fairly all right, but this country right or wrong business is getting a little out of date. Today we are fighting communism, okay. If I'd been alive 50 years ago, the brand of conservatism we have today would have been damn near called communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. The secret lies in personal experience, whether you're a Chinaman or an Englishman. They paused at the door. You admit that Lechifre did you personal evil, and that you would kill him if he appeared in front of you now? Well, when you get back to London you will find there are other Lechifres seeking to destroy you and your friends and your country. Em will tell you about them. And now that you have seen a really evil man, you will know how evil they can be, and you will go after them to destroy them in order to protect yourself and the people you love. These passages really get you thinking. Of course the main first Bond girl is Vesper Lind, which by the way is a wordplay on West Berlin, with her loyalties being split in the middle, something I always found to be a fascinating tidbit of information. I picture Marion Coulthoyard in the role of Vesper, and much like the film, she is Bond's first love interest, where at first Bond just views it as an annoyance to be teamed up with a woman, and as a man he simply just wants to sleep with her, but he later is impressed by her, mostly by her beauty at first, but slowly but surely he falls in love with her. The interesting aspect about Vesper is she starts out as a confident woman, intriguing Bond, but in the third act of the book, she turns into a mysterious, quiet and insecure type, where Bond desperately wants to know what's going on inside her head. It always baffled me how quickly Bond wants to marry her though, I guess that's definitely a generational thing, but I would want to know a few things first, like is she a caring person? Can she cook well? Is she not secretly a double agent working for the Russians? You know, basic stuff. Of course, in the end, the big reveal comes that she was blackmailed into working for Smurfs. I like to believe that Vesper truly fell for Bond as well, but had no other choice leading to her tragic suicide in the end, causing Bond to coldheartedly end the book with The Bitch is Dead, an excellent ending to the first novel. The lessive of the book barely speaks until the later half of the book is the calculated quiet and intelligent type of Bond villain, usually surrounded by two bodyguards, one of which has a hidden gun inside his cane, like the one that Zhukovsky has in The World is Unenough. The card game the book is leading up to is really thrilling. I never played the game of Baccarat in my life, but Fleming takes the time to familiarize you with the game and truly builds suspense into the stakes. As unfriling as a game of Baccarat sounds, it's the complete opposite and you gotta credit Fleming for it. The torture sequence is hauntingly good too. His eyes opened and he gazed dullly at his torturer. The shiefer spoke, That is all Bond. We will now finish with you, you understand? Not kill you, but finish with you. And then we will have in the girl and see if something can be got out of the remains of the two of you. He reached towards the table. Say goodbye to it, Bond. Anything involving genitals getting butchered should make any man sweat. Eventually Lechive meets his demise by a Smurfs assassin during the sequence just like in the movie and I always like to imagine that the Smurfs assassin taking him out is Donald Grant from the later from Russia with Love to imagine a sense of continuity. Other characters playing a role are of course M who admittedly in my head looks a lot like Bernard Lee in my mind with a bit of a different voice because the voice that Robert Whitfield does for him in the audio book version is just spot on to the sort of M that I pictured. James Bond's interview with M had been short. What about it, Bond? The paymaster will fix the funds. I'm going to ask the Duseyam to stand by. It's their territory and as it is we should be lucky if they don't kick up rough. I'll try and persuade them to send Mathis. You seem to get on well with him in Monte Carlo on that other casino job and I'm going to tell Washington because of the NATO angle. Felix Leider also makes his first appearance, meaning Bond, in this book. He's the friendly Texas American type of agent who doesn't really play that much of a role in the book other than supplying Bond with extra funds in the card game with the incredibly cool line of martial aid. I love that bit. So how does the book compare to the 2006 movie? Well, obviously there are a lot of differences. For one, the movie was created half a century later but a lot of the key elements are the same. Bond has to go head to head with Lechif at the card table. Though it was updated to poker in the movie. He's a life-threatening danger during the game. He falls in love with Vesper who turns out to be blackmailed into becoming a double agent and commits a tragic suicide in the end. But the book is definitely a lot more toned down in action and in scope and down to earth compared to its cinematic counterpart. And I think that's fine. When you're watching a movie you want to have the stunts and the explosions and the visuals. But with a book you generally are gonna invest a lot more hours into it compared to a movie. So you want it to be more thought provoking and deep and the book certainly offers some of that. The movie is one of the best Bond movies ever made but this is one of the best Bond books ever written. They're both really good for very different reasons. You really can't go wrong with either of these. Casino Royale is by far the Bond novel that I've read the most times. This partly comes from it being one of my favorite Bond novels but also comes from a personal quirk of wanting to do things in order. You see, I'm not getting into the latest A Mind to Kill just yet until I've reached the man with the golden gun as it will take place after that one and I just want to get the full experience. This is just the way that I am. This is why throughout the years when I attempt to start over in reading Fleming again I ended up reading Casino Royale the most. And it's a fantastic introduction to literary Bond. If you're just looking to read one Fleming novel I'd say pick up the first one. It's a relatively quick and thrilling read and though at first you may have to get used to Fleming's detailed writing. I mean the second chapter of the book is basically Bond reading a dossier of background information on the sheath but it's all part of what it's all leading up to. It has all the ingredients. The mission to clean out an agent of smurfs in the casino is both far-fetched and down to earth. Bond does well in building a world of espionage where rooms are bugged, nothing is as it seems. Assassination attempts are made on Bond's life and Bond has to use his wits. Like hiding the prize money behind the number plate on the outside of his hotel room door. This is why I came here to read Fleming. You gotta love stuff like that. The relationship of Bond and Vesper is intriguing and I feel even though the chapters after the sheath's death may drag a little bit at first, it all builds to a satisfying conclusion where all questions are answered and all puzzle pieces fall together. At the same time, it also sets up the later novels with Bond's personal motivation to take down smurfs being set into place. This is the novel that started it all and even though it was written in the early 50s, it still holds up as a fantastic thrilling ride that grips you and succeeds in getting you hooked to the literary Bond.