May 1981 Jonathan Cape. US first hardback edition: April 1981 Richard Marek/G. P. Putnam's Sons. UK first paperback edition: 1982 Coronet Books. US first paperback edition: May 1982 Berkley Books. The U.S. hardcover edition sold more than 130,000 copies. Reviews Reviews of the novel were mostly mixed. Poet Philip Larkin writing in The Times Literary Supplement, felt that the book had no life of its own and lacked Fleming's compelling readability. For Kingsley Amis, the book was "So sodding tame" and Gardner "can't write exciting stories." Later, Amis was to say the novel "was bad enough by any reasonable standard." Listener crime critic Marghanita Laski, a long-time admirer of Gardner's books, said Licence Renewed "is competent and has its funny moments. But this fine thriller-writer can't perfectly adjust down to the simpler genre, and the world-destructive plot is a waste of Gardner, without ever really convincing as Bond." Novelist Jessica Mann said in the British Book News that "Ian Fleming's James Bond books were never as crass as Licence Renewed. Writing for himself, Gardner is intelligent and original. In this Fleming rip-off, he reproduces Fleming's faults without their saving charms, except that he has cut down on the sex and sadism. Fleming's plots were always preposterous, but they carried a crazy, unifying conviction. Gardner's is just illogical. And how the mighty Bond is fallen; he has become a dull, dim — too many knocks on the head in the past, perhaps? — middle-aged man who chooses the wrong trade-names to advertise." Nicholas Shrimpton, in the New Statesman, argued that Bond was best left in his own era. "What John Gardner has failed to realise is that the charm of Bond is as strictly related to a sense of period as that of Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe. Removed from this distinctive environment, Bond is a fish out of water. The glamour shrivels, the self-indulgence becomes apologetic, and the atmosphere seems absurd." Robin W. Winks said in the Library Journal that "Gardner lacks the sparkle of Fleming's truly original plotting and humor, and Lavender Peacock simply is not Pussy Galore. What's sound here isn't very new and what's new isn't very sound. 007's license is best left unrenewed." The Globe and Mail crime fiction critic Derrick Murdoch complained that the villains were weak especially compared to Fleming's own, and that love interest Lavender Peacock is "a schoolgirl next to Pussy Galore."