To Betray, or Not to Betray" The first thing that struck me about "A Spy's Life" was how it differed from the previous books. While I really enjoyed The Secret Life of Brian and thought that it felt like a good way to show what Brian's life as a spy was like, it was the third book in the series and I was pretty annoyed that there was no real story progression. This book is a good book to read to fill in the gaps between the movies if you have not seen them or if you've only seen bits and pieces of them. In this book, we get a good idea of what the rest of the movie is like, at least the parts we saw in the movies. "Who is Bond, What is Bond?" I also really enjoyed this book. I think that this book worked best for me because we got to see more about the other members of MI6. I was glad to see that the author had picked different aspects of their life for the chapters of the book. Instead of a chapter on Moneypenny, for example, it was a chapter on Moneypenny and her mother. It was also interesting to read about Bond as a father. For those who don't know, Timothy Dalton didn't want to be thought of as Bond because he didn't want to be thought of as a "toyboy" for women to have to play with. To his defense, I'm sure that he knew he'd have to deal with this as a parent in this book and I thought that that was handled fairly well. "On the Way to a Cloak and Dagger" In the previous book we got to see how a day at work was for the male members of the spy group and while the plot of this book is a lot shorter than the last one, I actually think that this was a better book to start with. This book was interesting because for one thing, it gave us a lot more information about the previous spy films, including the ones that the previous book did not cover. We also got to meet more characters in this book. As a spy, Bond goes through a lot of trials and tribulations and in this book we see it first hand. I also liked reading the book about the spies who try to kill Bond at his girlfriend's house. The spy is an ex-Soviet spy who has made his way into MI5, while the girlfriend is a lawyer who worked for the CIA. What is especially intriguing is that MI6 thinks that the spy is actually an assassin sent to kill Bond by the KGB and they need to find out who he is and stop him. So I was surprised that the spy was killed while I was reading the book. This was also a good way to show how dangerous the spy game really is. The story also reminded me a bit of The Icarus Deception when the author wrote about the assassin and how he was supposed to capture the spy, not kill him, which is very interesting. "Bond's Tribute" This book was more of a series of flashbacks. It explained what was going on before the events of the previous book and gave me a chance to see why things happened as they did. It also made me feel better that it was okay to be a spy without having the need for a death warrant on your head. Of course, there's also some things in this book that could probably be a good starting point for a movie of their own. I was also very interested in how the two main characters came to be because while I think the author did a good job, the way it happened is a little off. I understand that this is meant to be a non-fiction account and that Bond's life can't have been a smooth and easy thing, but I think that there are some details that could have been fleshed out a little more. "You Can't Win" I thought that this book was the weakest of the bunch. It was interesting to see how Bond tried to get information out of his enemies, but it didn't really matter what he did because he lost anyway. It also didn't change anything because I didn't get a sense that the book actually affected his life that much. The ending really felt like a filler, too. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. It's definitely a good book to read if you're a fan of the original films. The author did a good job at making everything interesting and the writing was good overall. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next two books are going to be about. I think I can say that I’m one of the few people in the world who hasn’t watched any of the Bond movies. I read the books when I was a child, but that was it. And it was probably a good thing, because once I realized that I wasn’t the target demographic (read: a girl), I probably would never have watched any of them because there’s just no way I could. So, yes, “You Can’t Win” is the first Bond book I’ve ever read, and I’m really looking forward to reading more of the books in the series (I’ve decided to read them in order to fully immerse myself in the world that Ian Fleming created). Because Ian Fleming is the only writer to contribute to the movies, it makes sense that he was only able to write two of the books in the Bond series. It also makes sense that the other two books in the series are written by a number of different authors. “A Spy’s Life” is written by Mark Greaney, while the other two are written by Sebastian Faulks and William Boyd. This book is the story of Bond’s early years and includes some flashbacks to the events that led up to Bond’s first outing as a spy. In the beginning of the book, it was interesting to see Bond as a man who would rather watch the action than be the action. He is at his father’s home and is attempting to train the new secret service agent that has come to join MI6, but he knows it is a waste of time. And I agree, we get to see the characters develop in this book more than in the other books in the series. It’s interesting to see the progression of events that would change Bond as a person and as a spy. The thing that I enjoyed most about “A Spy’s Life” was the inclusion of flashbacks. This book felt like it could have been an extension of a previous movie because of how well the writing flowed and because of the author’s description of Bond’s first outing as a spy. He went through some serious training, and the description was very in-line with what we saw in the film. This book was different from the others, though, because of its shorter length. The book felt more like a short story because of the short length of it and because it did not provide any information about what happens to the characters. This book also seemed to be more of a story written about the author rather than the actual spy. Because of how well this book fit in with the world of Bond, I had a slight inclination of what was going to happen. This did not leave me disappointed, though, because the author did a good job at filling in the gaps to give me a fuller picture. A few of the characters that had only been mentioned in previous books were fully explained in this book, and it was interesting to read the history of Bond. And that was what this book was intended for: history. It wasn’t an action-packed story, and it wasn’t as deep and interesting as some of the others. But I think it was meant to be because it is a “filler” book. This book was definitely my least favorite in the series. It’s short length made it seem like filler, and that’s exactly what it was. There was just no meat to the story. While the story was cool, it didn’t give a sense of what the author was trying to do or show to the reader because there wasn’t enough in the story to give readers any sense of the overall story that the book was attempting to tell. I did appreciate reading the backstory to this book and to Bond in general. But the book was more of an excerpt from the author than it was a story in and of itself. Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Because I'm an author myself and a reviewer, I always use my own books to review. Now, I've heard that authors can get a little too fond of the reviews they receive and I can definitely see that sometimes being true. After reading the book myself, I knew I would probably take it a little more seriously than a reviewer would. "It's Not a Date" While this book was quite well written, it felt a little bit shallow to me. There were a lot of things that were interesting to me, and some that just didn't add up at all. One of the parts that I felt the author did well in was showing the growth of one character, a woman named Beth. Beth has her share of troubles and is trying to overcome them all and become a successful lawyer in Washington D.C. Beth has always wanted to do this, but she seems to want more than she can possibly give to a man. This book starts off showing how she has the chance to be with a man who is different from the rest. She finds herself becoming very interested in a lawyer named Kyle. She's unsure about her feelings toward Kyle, so she sets out to find out how