Bond doesn't feel like Bond, he talks to M the wrong way, he wouldn't play tennis, he is absent for too much of the book and when he is present he never seems in mortal danger.

Devil May Care, Sebastian Faulks's new James Bond adventure, has broken sales records sales since its publication last week, but the complaints are already streaming in from diehard 007 fans.

It started with a review on the Bond fansite CommanderBond.net, posted hours after the book came out. A reader called “whiteskwirl” wrote: “Devil May Care disappointed me. It was the weak story, weak villain motivation, and weak action scenes which left me feeling cold. Bond saves the day but it's too easy ... Devil May Care is, in my opinion, the literary Die Another Day.”

Anyone who remembers the invisible car in Pierce Brosnan's last Bond film knows that there is no fainter praise with which to damn a fresh 007 adventure.

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Devil May Care is the 33rd Bond book authorised by the author's estate since Ian Fleming's death in 1964 but the first since Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun to be penned by an acclaimed literary novelist. Faulks is billed as the author, “writing as Ian Fleming”, and he has grandly explained that his commission was “like asking someone who writes complex, symphonic music to write a pop song”.

The book, set in 1967, the year after the last original Fleming adventures were published, pits Bond against Dr Julius Gorner, a megalomaniac with a monkey paw for a hand who wants to buy The Times and is hellbent on starting the Third World War.

The book is a commercial hit, helped by a huge marketing push from Penguin, Ian Fleming's centenary celebrations and the new lease of life in the Bond franchise supplied by Daniel Craig in Casino Royale and this year's Bond film, Quantum of Solace.

Devil May Care sold 44,093 copies in its first four days to top the Nielsen BookScan sales charts and become Penguin's fastest-selling hardback fiction title ever.

However, many of Fleming's devoted fans think that Faulks, the lionised author of Birdsong and Charlotte Grey, has failed to make the transition to thriller writing. David Schofield, also commenting on the CommanderBond site, is one of those “extremely disappointed” Fleming loyalists, saying: “Clearly, a case of Faulks slumming it and not taking the project seriously. Anyone who thinks this style re-creates Fleming, or is evocative of Fleming, hasn't read Fleming.”

He is particularly aggrieved that the hero is absent for large chunks of the book, saying: “Faulks seems afraid simply to WRITE about JAMES BOND!” Postings on other Bond fan sites have maintained the gloomy tone.

David at the James Bond International Fan Club's forum complained that “Bond would never have been so familiar and flippant with M as he is in this book”. At AbsolutelyJamesBond, a reviewer objected to the “weak storyline” and the “bumbling if resourceful Bond”, saying: “It feels like a homage, not a serious Bond novel. And in the end, you feel like you just went through a pointless encounter with a family member that you lost contact with years ago. The connection is no longer there.”

Readers were particularly divided over an early set piece: a tennis match between Bond and the villain, who inevitably cheats. Some enjoyed it as a tribute to the round of golf in Goldfinger, but one wrote: “I still can't see Bond playing tennis.” Another protested: “This is not 'writing as Fleming', it is 'plagiarising Fleming' to the point of 'mocking Fleming'.”

Fleming would have enjoyed the backlash immensely. He resented the snobbery of his wife Anne's literary friends and passed his work off as “the pillow fantasies of an adolescent mind”, but he took himself seriously.

Matthew Fleming, Ian's great-nephew and a member of Ian Fleming Publications' board, said: “We couldn't be prouder of the job that Sebastian's done but we appreciate that there is a degree of public ownership of the Bond brand and everyone is entitled to their opinion.”

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