"Perhaps the best Bond adventure we have had to date."

Official Young Bond news source, The Young Bond Dossier, tips us off that the first review of Charlie Higson’s next novel, By Royal Command, is now online – 74 days before the book’s publication.

John Lloyd on Waterstones.com has given Higson’s fifth Young Bond instalment a glowing five-star review, an excerpt from which is below.

Try to put down at your peril. By Royal Command is perhaps the best Bond adventure we have had to date. It is with no small amount of garrulous gusto that I can pronounce an even greater array of action, adventure, gadgets, villains and of course Bond beauties. Wonderfully descriptive amid exotic locations Charlie Higson really involves the reader in details to readily devour. Realistic scenarios furnish By Royal Command with an encompassing exhalation unbeknown to entertainment in pen and ink. Rule Britannia the young Bond is back!

Meanwhile, in an interview with Waterstones.com, Higson confirmed he has been signed by Puffin to write a series of non-Bond novels. CommanderBond.net first reported in April that the author had signed a three-book deal with the publisher.

“I have signed a deal with Puffin books to a new series for children,” Higson said. “They are going to be action adventures, but with a horror angle.”

Higson also gave a few more details about what James Bond fans can expect from By Royal Command.

“By the end of By Royal Command we see him poised on the edge of becoming Fleming’s Bond. He is very much ready for the next phase of his life. He has come a long way – but still has far to go.”

When asked where James Bond goes from here, Higson replied, “Well, first of all to a new school – Fettes, in Scotland (that’s not a spoiler, anyone who has read the adult Bond books knows the story). But the big thing looming on his horizon is the second world war. The events of By Royal Command take place in 1934 so the war is only five years away. Bond will be 19 when war breaks out, and we know that he went into naval intelligence – MI6 – and worked as an agent overseas. I think it would be really interesting to find out more about his early wartime experiences, his training in Scotland, his 1st missions, his gaining the 00 status. That would be a fun job for a writer.”

This statement will no doubt fuel the exciting suggestion that Higson will return at some point in the future to continue fleshing out James Bond’s past.

Charlie Higson’s fourth Young Bond novel, Hurricane Gold, was published in paperback last month. By Royal Command is out in hardback on 4 September.

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