Good, not great, Bond. Antagonists solid, plot is fast-paced and involving, writing is sharp and occaisonally witty. ( )

Once again a fast paced and to the point 007 adventure with little excess writing. Well crafted tale of bond and his rarley noted in the movies American partner Felix Leiter. Another excellent ending. So unlike the movies. ( )

Thunderball got off to an excellent start on the whole. The world is in danger, M has a hunch, Bond is off to save the world. In this novel Bond is not as clever or as interesting as many of the others. The storyline flows from piece to piece with little surprise or excitement and does seem to draw out a bit longer than needed. At the end of the story I found myself impatiently waiting for the telling of the tale to catch up to the ending I already knew would arrive. ( )

A long Bond novel, & though nothing much happens for a longish period the mood is kept tense & the climax is a classic set piece that fits perfectly. ( )

Hmmm. James Bond is one of the finest creations in the history of the spy genre. Everybody knows his name - he's probably as famous as Coca Cola (though I have tendency to exaggerate). Thunderball, one of his most famous adventures, was made twice, once officially, and once in an unofficial kind of rip-off film that resurrected Sean Connery as Bond when it really shouldn't have.

So, what about the book? Well, imagine that Bond the phenomenon never happened. Imagine that, really, he was a bit of a simpleton, who had good hunches but didn't really act on them without permission from at least one other person, and that generally he was just an average joe.

Okay, I can hear you say, so what? So Fleming wanted to show us his hero in a new light? Well, not really. The plot, too, starts off interesting, when we get to it - the opening chapters at an English health spa are painful - but suddenly goes stupid. Blofeld's introduction is marvellous, and the highlight of the book, but to think that a group of mercenary terrorists, having stolen two nukes, would use a treasure hunt in the Bahamas as a cover is pretty silly, and the denouement just weak. ( )