{"id":1242,"date":"2018-09-26T15:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T21:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1242"},"modified":"2018-09-23T10:58:50","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T16:58:50","slug":"book-moonraker-1955","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/09\/26\/book-moonraker-1955\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Moonraker (1955)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Moonraker\"Moonraker
\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 1955
\nAuthor: Ian Fleming
\nLength: 410 minutes \/ 6.83 hours<\/p>\n

For those of you who have seen the movie\u00a0Moonraker<\/em>\u00a0(1979), push everything you know about this story out of your head. About the only things that the film has in common with the book are the main character, villain, and an enormous rocket. While the film tried to capitalize on the sci-fi that was popular at the time, the original book takes a look at the threat introduced in World War II by the Germans: ballistic missiles. For its time, the book was relevant in a world that hadn\u2019t even been to space yet.<\/p>\n

Having now read a handful of the James Bond books, my problem with this book stems from how formulaic it was. Only three books in, and it felt like Fleming was recycling content and would continue to for books to come (like in\u00a0Goldfinger<\/a><\/em>). I mean, never before has a game of bridge been so exciting, but using card games as exposition to introduce the villain already seems done to death at this point. From here, it\u2019s just a hop, skip, and a jump through the sexual tension with a female counterpart, the villain\u2019s monologue, and the eventual foiling of plans by Bond.<\/p>\n

While I did appreciate the slight twist in the ending with Gala Brand, it seemed slightly out of character based on how she acted previously in the story. Perhaps this was because the narrator is practically half-inside Bond\u2019s head, but it still felt a little misleading. While the conclusion of the villain\u2019s plot was exciting, the comic nature of the comeuppance almost had an eye-rolling chuckle tied to it as well. In the end,\u00a0Moonraker<\/em>\u00a0is a James Bond story, so it delivers on all the tropes and clich\u00e9s of the series. If you like the series, you\u2019re unlikely to be disappointed.<\/p>\n

The standard Bond formula in yet another book, I give\u00a0Moonraker<\/em>\u00a03.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moonraker Year: 1955 Author: Ian Fleming Length: 410 minutes \/ 6.83 hours For those of you who have seen the movie\u00a0Moonraker\u00a0(1979), push everything you know about this story out of your head. About the only things that the film has in common with the book are the main character, villain, and an enormous rocket. While […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,54],"tags":[1079,1471,55,1473,477,319,1472,1470,8],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-book","tag-1079","tag-bond","tag-book","tag-germans","tag-ian-fleming","tag-james-bond","tag-missiles","tag-moonraker","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}