Euan Ferguson, writing in "The Guardian"s sister paper, "The Observer", stated that "It's good. Which is to say it's better than it could have been. It is not, however, that good." He noted that Faulks "evokes scenes with deft skill: recreates a time and a world with great brio, and manages it with the block script of Fleming's journalistic nature rather than his own more cursive style." Ferguson remained unsatisfied by the book, although he absolves the author of the blame, saying "the problem isn't Faulks, it's Bond. With Fleming's untimely death, the link was broken". Ferguson is pessimistic about Bond's future and predicted that "Bond's tux now flaps in the wind and despite Faulks having made such a well-finessed fist of this, it is, I suspect, a last hurrah for 007, destined to die on the page, if not the screen".