James Bond: You only live twice is a novel written by a man, who was actually an agent himself, Ian Fleming. It is the 11th James Bond book and was published in the year 1964.
Like all James Bond books, You only live twice represents the genre of spy fiction. It also seems to have quite a bit of action in it, but spy fiction is enough to tell the genre.
James Bond is an obvious main character of the story. You can tell that just by looking at the book cover. There are many characters that work with Bond or against him. The biggest of the side characters in Tiger Tanaka, a Japanese fellow who is with Bond right from the start of the book.
The English in the book is really fine and has some quite unique words that some might not know the meaning of, but it didn’t affect the reading of the book that much. For example:”James Bond wrestled with his chopsticks and slivers of raw octopus and a mound of rice and watched the jagged coastline, interspersed with glittering paddy-fields, flash by”. The story is told by an omniscient narrator, which seems fitting for the book. It’s nice to know all the Bond’s thoughts and to know some bits of the past too.
I really didn’t know what to expect from the book. It’s been a while since I saw the movie and I haven’t ever read a book in English before. But I really liked the book, the fancy words and the describing of places and the narration was spot-on. It was nice to read in English too. Like I mentioned I haven’t read an English book so I have nothing to compare it to, but for me it felt really nice. Maybe I should start reading more, and in English ofcourse