Rating: 
Summary: Funny how tastes differ....
Review: Well, I couldn't disagree more with the other reviewers. I found Fierce Invalids to be my favorite Robbins book yet. More story-oriented than some of his others - maybe that's what didn't sit well with some who were looking for a Jitterbug repeat - but a wonderful read to be sure.
Rating:
Summary: Fierce Invalids is a rhytmic delight
Review: Perhaps it is the variety of all the unique places that you will travel. Perhaps it is the characters that will develop from vivid descriptions before your very eyes. Whatever the case, this book was quite pleasing.While not reading this tome, but rather listening to the unabridged version, I was absorbed with the anticipation of the imagery and dialogue. The vivid descriptions and interplay of Smitters with the rest of his world will keep you captivated to the very end. The philosophical questions and observations that Smitters raises in his dialog will give you plenty of questions with which to stimulate or intimidate your friends. Assuming they do not think you are nuts. Then again, who really cares? From the CIA, teenage lust, to the Roman Catholic Church, nothing is off limits from being questioned or discussed. If nothing else, you will look at the world a little differently as you get to tomorrow. Or is that today? It is likely this 10 cassette version was the longest I have listened to. I am almost sad to see it over. I will look forward to listening to it again. EJ
Rating:
Summary: Hooked
Review: Fierce Invalids was my first Tom Robbins book. As I read it I constantly found myself facing a vivid and masterfull expression of everything I believe in myself. The plot is hilarious, the characters are improbable, the language is out of a master's workshop. I never enjoyed a book more and I wished it would never end -- dragging my reading out as much as possible. Never mind the plot. Read the book for its beautiful and unabashed use of the English language and to understand how to arm yourself against the powers of organized mind-manipulation. Thank you, Tom.
Rating: 
Summary: He gets points for inventiveness BUT...
Review: I've read ALL of Tom Robbins' books. I WAIT for his books and pay full, hardcover price. Jitterbug Perfume is just about my favorite book ever. A testament to my loyalty? I read this book cover-to-cover. Yep. Every word. Robbins' writing is fun, his situations inventive, his plots wonderfully convoluted. Just as we've come to expect. But I couldn't stand the main character. Before you think, oh, I didn't get it, or this is some feminist diatribe, let me assure you, I got it, and I've liked other books with sexist, morally twisted characters. It's just that he was an unlikable, bitter -- even repugnant -- aging old man who would have been better left sitting in his room consuming caviar and Internet porn -- or whatever made him happy and kept him from the rest of us. About halfway through, I was sort of hoping he'd just die, if only to save me from having to read the rest. Tom, what happened? Your work used to be enlightening and magical. Reading this one felt like I was being dragged through the desert by someone who once was fun and could now only mimic that memory of himself. I am a loyalist. I will read you again. But not even my local used bookstore would buy this one back.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun to read, but not his best
Review: After reading his last novel, "Half Asleep in Frogs Pajamas," I thought Robbins really lost it. It was one of the worse books I've ever actually finished. I have read all books by him as a lover of humor, and find him witty, bizzare, and truly funny. This is not as good as "Cowgirls", which is his tour de force, or "Still Life with Woodpecker," or even "Skinny Legs and All," but it is fun and amusing, and even philosophical. Reading it shortly after 9/11 gave it more intrigue, as half of the book takes place in the Middle East, and deals with some of today's controversial issues. Switters, a soon to be defunked CIA agent, finds himself in the Amazon, setting his gradmother's beloved parrot free, so the bird can spend it's remaining days uncaged, in natural surroundings. But when Switters is lead to a shaman with a head the shape of a pyramid, who puts a curse on him, denying him the privilege of using his legs, his life turns upside down. He's fired from his CIA job, gets rejected by his adolescent step sister, whom he is lusting after, and takes a job as a private agent, with an assignment to take gas masks to Kurdish soldiers in Iraq. How does he end up having an affair with a Catholic nun in an excommunicated convent in the middle of nowhere? And who is the blue nude in his grandmother's Matisse? Only Robbins could have thought up such craziness. It is more predictable and less surprising than some of his other books, but still I enjoyed reading it, as it was fun and provided a good escape for such a terrible time.
Rating:
Summary: The Robbins' Promise... Renewed !
Review: Robbins, soul spawn of the '60s, is without doubt, the most "outside the box" descriptor writing today. His first, <Roadside>, introduced his eternal themes, from which he has never strayed, and Pray !, he never will. After <Cowgirls>, the Book (I shall not treat of that cinema sensationale), I felt him to be "off his feed," e.g., <Woodpecker>; but <Fierce Invalids>
has it ALL, says it ALL, and will both knock your socks off AND make them go up and down ! And he gifts us with a "new Amanda !"
If you can read <Fierce Invalids>, and not put it down during
cleansing belly laughs, or to contemplate Robbins' framing of
"The Eternal Issues," mayhaps you might schedule another MRI... soon. Keep the pretending DeLillos and whomever: Robbins is ours: he writes to be read, savoured, and to provoke... again !!!
And he L-O-V-E-S authentic women... without apology. Viva Tom !
Rating: 
Summary: Cowgirls this ain't
Review: I've read all of TR's novels and eagerly awaited this one. What a bust! I got about half way through it and just put it down - never to return.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous Frivolity
Review: I think we could all learn a thing or two from this book. Not only does Robbins weave a fantatic tapistry of a story, but he does so in such a whimsical lighthearted fashion, mimicing the "don't take yourself so seriously" theme of the story. Filled with the same linguistic adventures we have come to know and love from Robbins, Fierce Invalids is a fantastic achivement in both plot and free-spirited humor. A little over the top for many conservative minded people, so I understand why many are not as thrilled with this novel; seeing how it contains many drug references, and is quite esoteric at times. But if you relax and let Mr. Robbins do the talking, you'll be more then pleasantly surprised.
Rating:
Summary: Diluted prose
Review: This book was my introduction to Tom Robbins, and it left me unsatisfied. It seemed to me that he attempted to advance the story (and his philosophizing) by throwing images and similes at the reader, and hoping some stuck. The result is frustrating -- Switters is a tedious travel companion who talks too much and says too little, and descriptions that fail to resonate at first ("too damn vivid", "fierce, hypnotic green eyes") do no better when repeated. Don't take Pynchon's praise too seriously; "Fierce Invalids" lacks the intensity, depth, and humor that "Gravity's Rainbow" achieves.
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Summary: Wasted Talent, Puerile Book, by fermed
Review: This is a heavy handed attempt at being funny, and like most enterprises of such type, it fails. The author surely has an extraordinary talent, but it shows only occasionally (and fleetingly) in this book. What hits the reader--listener in this case--is the huge lack of discipline that underlies this novel. Without discipline there can be no art, no creativity, no music or architecture or painting or sculpture; and this is a monument to the lack of discipline. The book is populated by a variety of characters, most of whom seem plucked from a warehouse for discarded cliches: the lusting nun, the magical primitive, the pompous Britisher in a jungle setting, the slimmy lawyer, the spunky grandma, the titillating teenager, the drunk-talented-charming protagonist, the Pope. It is replete with half-baked philosophical pirouetting, with Marx Brothers and Three Stooges slapstick, and more insufferable ploys. The book is twice as long as it should be. Its attempts at cleverness, like its attempts at humor, fail more often than not. Shock for the sake of shock has no shock value. Are the major publishing houses bereft of editors? Is there no one left with the authority to sit Mr. Robbins down and force him to re-write until he gets his story straight and drops all the nonsense? Mawkishness is never funny, slapstick is puerile, pseudo philosophy is tedious. A potentially great writing talent is being wasted for lack of discipline and direction. Such a shame.
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