David's Reviews > The Lost Adventures of James Bond

I just finished reading “The Lost Adventures of James Bond: Timothy Dalton’s Third and Fourth Bond Films, James Bond, Jr., & Other Unmade or Forgotten 007 Projects” by Mark Edlitz (published in 2020).

An interesting (unauthorized by the James Bond literary and film license holders) overview of several never made James Bond movies (including several different story treatments for the aforementioned never made third and fourth Timothy Dalton movies some Dalton only ended up making two James Bond movies before stepping down from the role to be replaced by Pierce Brosnan, as well as unmade stories for Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan), the produced but mostly forgotten (and largely maligned) 1991-1992 “James Bond Jr.” children’s animated series and its novelizations/tie-ins, several James Bond comic book series of the 1990s (including the never completed “James Bond: A Silent Armageddon” and the never released “Barracuda Run”), Brazilian Bond comics, an American James Bond theme park ride, a Heineken commercial shot with current James Bond actor Daniel Craig, and other projects.

Fans of the James Bond films as well as of the “literary Bond” (as depicted in Ian Flemings original James Bond novels and in the subsequent continuation novels and comic books) should find this book of interest. Edlitz (who had written another James Bond related book prior to this, “The Many Lives of James Bond: How the Creators of 007 Have Decoded the Superspy” (2019)) is very knowledgeable of the subject and includes numerous interviews with the writers, directors, and, in at least one instance, actor (a voice actor who plays James Bond in a series of BBC produced radio adaptations of the Ian Fleming novels), who worked on these unrealized or mostly forgotten Bond projects.

My one slight quibble is with the format chosen: a very large (height and width) trade paperback format that doesn’t really suit a mostly text book such as this. The width of the book is greater than my eyes could scan each line of text from left to right without having to turn my head, move the book, or keep looking away and back again, which slowed down my reading quite a bit. (This is a book that would actually “read better” as an eBook, I think.)