For most of the run of the James Bond films–beginning with 1962’s Dr. No–it didn’t matter at all which adventure would come next. Very rarely during the first 20 films in the franchise did they even reference events from previous films. They were well and truly standalone adventures. One of the reasons might have been that the movies were made waaaaaay out of order related to the Ian Fleming novels. That changed in 2006 with Casino Royale, based on the first Fleming novel, which focused on Bond’s first case. Nothing much happened before that, right? Well, according to Entertainment Weekly, the newest official novel gives us a new beginning.

Following Fleming’s death in 1964, a number of authors have taken over writing “official” James Bond novels, and most of them either take place out of continuity or happen after everything we’ve seen already. Author Anthony Horowitz (known for the YA Diamond Brothers series and the Alex Rider series) wrote his first Bond novel, Trigger Mortis, in 2015 and set it in the Fleming novels timeline, taking place after Goldfinger. Now his second novel, Forever and a Day, will be set prior to the events of Casino Royale.

The book begins with 007 “found floating in the waters of Marseilles, killed by an unknown hand,” with the added tease that “it’s time for a new agent to step up.” The book will give us “what might have been Bond’s first mission,” Horowitz said in a statement to the New York Times. It imagines “some of the forces that might have turned him into the iconic figure that the whole world knows.” M and Miss Moneypenny are slated to appear as well.

Forever and a Day‘s expected release is set for May 31 in the U.K. and sometime later in 2018 in the U.S. Let us know your thoughts on this new Bond novel in the comments below!

Images: Sony

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

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