For Your Eyes Only (James Bond, #8)

by Ian Fleming

For Your Eyes Only is the eighth of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books and sees the agent in five exotic adventures around the world …

Sudden emergencies and beautiful girls who aren’t quite what they seem are the stock-in-trade of James Bond. And when 007 is on the case there’s only one thing you can be sure of – the result will be thrilling. Whether he’s dealing with the assassination of a Cuban thug in America, the destruction of an international heroin ring, or sudden death in the Seychelles, Bond gets the job done. In his own suave and unmistakable style …

• ISBN10: 071815391X
• ISBN13: 9780718153915
• Publish Date: 29 May 2008 (first published 20 May 1960)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 29 March 2012
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Penguin 007
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 240
• Language: English

Reviews

[clq]

I've come to have relatively low expectations of the Bond books, but For Your Eyes Only exceeded those expectations by quite a wide margin.

It's a collection of short stories, which I now think suits Bond rather well. Instead of various contrivances to drive the plot forward, these are snippets of the "regular" life of an agent such as Bond, and for a franchise which essentially seems to be based on stereotypes of what the franchise should be like, the variety in these short stories is refreshing. One of them is literally a dinner-party in which another guest tells Bond a story - and that's it.

Bond also seems more human in these stories than in the previous ones. Especially the way in which he, and the stories as a whole, treats women, which I've found to be over-the-line problematic in some of the previous books, feels more like a reflection on Bond himself: a way to make up for something that he knows is lacking in his life.

I wouldn't say that any of the stories in this book are exceptional, but together they work very well. It's been too long since I read Casino Royale for me to be certain about this being my favourite Bond-book, but For Your Eyes Only was certainly a very pleasant surprise.