Ian Fleming's From Russia With Love is a five out of five stars in my book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I was in the moment, which is rare because I usually try to read novels only for the sake of study. I try to breeze through them in order to learn what I can and move onto the next novel. But not this time. I truly loved reading this novel. I felt like I was there.

From Russia With Love is about 007 and MI6's plan for him to rendezvous with a Russian agent girl who claims she wants to leave Russian intelligence because she fell in love with James Bond. She had told an English agent that she will hand over a secret Russian war device called Spektor if only she can be with James Bond and move to England at the good grace of MI6. Curious of the authenticity of her story and whether this is just some Russian ploy, MI6 decides to play along and see what they can gain from the situation. Bond goes to meet the girl and travel with her form Istanbul, Turkey by train to Paris, France, and then England.

The first third of the novel involves SMERSH, the Russian spy group responsible only for killing off enemy spies, as they recruit a mad man to kill James Bond, as well as the 24-year-old seductress Romanova to perform the rendezvous with bond to make him fall in love with her so they can take pictures of them making love in a hotel to embarrass his career and MI6.

The second third is about Bond traveling to Istanbul, meeting his fellow spy there. Action ensues as the Russians try to kill his comrade, but not him, strangely. Third part of the novel involves finally meeting Romanova. They make love, then go on a train, where three Russian men are following them. His comrade is able to get them kicked off the train, but his comrade is killed. Then the bad assassin comes on the train and Bond mistakes him to be a friend. The man almost kills him but fails. When Bond saves himself and the girl by killing the villain, he pulls Romanova off the train and ends up going to a hotel in Paris to kill the woman who is head of SMERSH.

The characters felt credible because they were so simple and archetypal. I could see them clearly in my mind either because I already saw them in the film or because they were like cartoons. Which I surprisingly liked.

My favorite character was Bond. I liked his comrade who had an interesting back story, I liked the naïve girl and the bad guy, but now that I think about it, the only character with any real depth was Bond. Everyone else was like a cartoon, fulfilling their purpose. And you know what? I liked that for some reason. It's kind of like Harry Potter. Fun.

I could relate to bond especially when he talked about what it was like working in a corporate setting. I also liked how the girl was only sympathetic enough to still be relatable. I liked how Bond mentions that it only takes one bad apple in a corporate office team to ruin the work culture.

I really loved the book. My favorite part was the preparation leading up to each action event. I liked how Fleming seemed to devote 60% of the book leading up to each action event, 10% to each action event, and then 30% on reflection of each event. However, the ending of the book ended in action.

I was reminded of Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes when the bad guy Nash revealed the truth about what was happening behind the scenes before he was going to kill Bond. Every Harry Potter book has that moment when the bad guy reveals the truth behind all the foreshadowing that made the book mysterious from beginning to end. I really liked to see how effective that device is. It ties the whole story together quite nicely and reminds you of what you read in the beginning.

My least favorite part of the book was honestly the ten percent of action. Except for the gypsy brawl. That was interesting. The fight with the main bad guy was cool for its calculation but I realize that either Fleming is less than good at writing action or action overall is just hard to read about. Hard to visualize. It gets confusing. I'd like to say I care about reading action, but I still need a good example of action in fiction before I can attest to that.

If I could change anything, it would be only to make the action scenes clearer; Fleming's writing is so clear and breathless that I don't know whether making his writing any better is feasible; so this is more of a hypothetical—if the action sequences could be any easier to visualize, I wish they could.

I already recommended this book to my dad. This might just be a male fantasy book. But I would still recommend this book to everybody, at least to see if they like it. A person who loves spy fiction and fantasies like Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes will see considerable comparisons.