With Licence to Read!!! BOND, ONLY BOND The Year: 1969.The place: West Africa.The Mission: Oh, something easy......just to stop a civil war.Bond, only Bond.I had good expectations about this new novel about James Bond.The first thing that I liked it was the title of the book: Solo. I liked it since I know that Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond) was involved in the pre-production of the 60´s TV series about spies: The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. And Fleming created the character of "Napoleon Solo". Even he conceived the series with a couple man/woman for the series like in The Avengers (No, not the Marvel's but the British 60's TV series about spies too). It was later that with the good work of the character of Illya Kuryakin, that they set it as a team man/man.In this book there was a character, Brigadier Solomon Adeka, called "The African Napoleon". So, it was easy doing the math here.Also, it was expected that at some point of the mission, Bond would have to go "solo" without help or back-up. So, it was a fantastic title for a Bond novel. BACK TO SIXTIES Also I liked the concept of setting it on 1969, using the "original" James Bond of Fleming's novels.So, instead of struggling in updating the character to a modern world, the author just went back in time to use the character in a logic continuation of how Fleming left the character.It was a brilliant idea. Also, an interesting thing is that the famous character "Q" never appeared on the Flemming's novels so, here, the author got the chance of introduced him as a young Quentin Dale. WHAT HAPPENED THEN? So, you may be wondering why the 3-star rating.Okay, first of all, the first two chapters were really slow ones and I was like out of track there, BUT once Bond reached the MI6 headquarters and he was briefed about his mission, the book got in track wonderfully, and I really enjoyed a lot all the deal of him getting into the fictional country of Zanzarim in West Africa.In fact, the story presents a very realistic portrait of the African situation in the 60's.However, at some point you feel that Bond isn't exactly in the "good" side of the war or that his mission is really something "good" but helping to destroy a struggling little new nation just because of political interests of England.Of course, spies don't do politics and morale judgments, but I expected that at some point his "solo" status maybe that he didn't approve his mission, but no, it wasn't the case.Even at some point he opted to put into coma some character instead of killing him that I think it was the wisest move due the situation, but he didn't do it. Geez! So, why he does have a licence to kill if he didn't use it?At some point without spoiling (don't worry!), the mission was "succesfully" acomplished in the eyes of MI6 and her Majesty, BUT James Bond felt that he needs to go further, and honestly his motivations for that, in my opinion, were really weak and innecesary. In that moment, all my joy and excitement reading the novel went straight down.While the book presents an interesting and well developed henchman, the choice of "mastermind" was very weak and I think it ruined all the premise of the story.Also, the setting changed from West Africa to America and the CIA is heavily involved. Geez. If I want to read a novel about CIA, I'd do it, but when it's James Bond, I expected a mission with MI6 strong presence. So, I could forgive the two first chapters and still giving it a 4 or 5 star rating but the way how the third part of the story turned definitely convinced me that the only fair rating was of 3 stars, that in any case it's still in the safe side of the rating. However, depending of your expectations, you still may find this book like a compeling and very acceptable Bond novel.