For Your Eyes Only

A collection of James Bond short stories, entertaining though all in all not nearly as polished as the first installments of the series. You can tell how these later books were simply turned into “action dude does action dude stuff” when the films were made. Some of the internal struggle that defines the earlier books is still present here, to be fair, but he ends up shrugging it off a lot more, in favor of whichever pretty woman crossed his path today.

In For Your Eyes Only, the eighth book published in the 007 series, we get a mixture of five Bond short stories. Most of the stories are standard adventures but a couple are more experimental tales. For example Quantum of Solace and The Hildebrand Rarity.

- From A View To A Kill is about the routine life of a spy. It sees Bond on a minor mission which doesn't include world domination.
- Quantum of Solace is a non-spy related story. Bond listens to a story of a disaffected marriage . This gives an insight into Bond's psyche and mindset.
- Risico sees Bond blocking the flow of heroin into England.
- In “For Your Eyes Only”, Bond takes a personal assignment from M tracking the killers of his friends.
- The Hildebrand Rarity is like For Your Eyes Only. It reduces Bond to an observer.
The stories are all entertaining enough and show Fleming trying out different ideas and styles. Fleming seems to paint a more rounded picture of Bond as he deals with a variety of situations. He also explores the compassionate and human side of Bond too

Justice and revenge are themes that run through two of the stories. In “For Your Eyes Only” Fleming examines revenge from several angles: Bond's, M's and Judy Havelock's and each has a different interpretation. Bond's approach to killing is also dissected in “For Your Eyes Only” whilst the morality of killing is a theme in “The Hildebrand Rarity”.

Bond's relationship with M is studied in “For Your Eyes Only”, with Bond taking a difficult decision for M. This shows that even M has to grapple with the uncertainties related to the weight of command. It also highlights that Bond respects M as he understands that he's trying to do his best for his country.

He comes across as almost an environmentalist in “The Hildebrand Rarity”. Contrast this to Bond's love of the finer things in life.

As a fan of the Bond movies I could recognise the story elements and titles which ended up in the films For Your Eyes Only (1981), A View to a Kill (1985), Licence to Kill (1989) and Quantum of Solace (2008).

So in summary, while these stories are out of the ordinary they could have been better. For example, they could have filled in some of Bond's back story: what did he do in WW2 or flesh out the details behind his 00 status, for example. There is less racism and sexism than previous books but I think this just because there are less words! I definitely preferred the longer Bond novels. The plots are better, the villains are crazier and character interactions and relationships better explored.