Rating: 
Summary: Tom Robbins given the room to develop
Review: Tom Robbins has always seemed constrained by space and with Fierce Invalids he is finally given the room to roam with Switters.
Rating:
Summary: Buisiness as usual
Review: Tom Robbins shouldn't be writing best-selling novels. It's not right somehow. Tom Robbins should be working some bazaar somewhere. There would be open sacks full of saffron and turmeric, vermin scurrying by your feet, crowds and smells and bizarre animals you've never heard of. Tom will be cooking something up. Or rather, there'll be somebody - some shady figure - behind the scenes cooking something up. Tom'll be out front with a cauldron and a spoon inviting you to taste something. The cauldron will be filled with a murky bubbling liquid, halfway between soup and stew. Don't ask what's in there. Guaranteed you won't like the sound of it. The recipe would be half gumbo and half - whatever the stuff Burroughs poached from South America was (was it called yaga? hallucinogenic bark, at any rate), with maybe a hint of sandarac thrown in for good measure. Novels written by Tom Robbins are always a heady brew. You know they are not good for you, but you can't help yourself. Once you've tasted that stew once, you'll never turn it down. Wherever you are, whatever is happening, all you need to do is see that name (Tom Robbins? Ah yes, that's our special today, sir!) and that's what you're ordering. Switters is your guide. He's one of the angels. On a whatever-the-opposite-of-routine-is mission to South America, he is cursed by a pyramidal witch doctor such that his feet can't touch the ground. Now, the last thing a cuckoo needs is to be told that he can't put his feet on the ground. What follows is the product of a man with his head firmly in the clouds (cloud 9 to be precise). There are underage maneaters, renegade nuns, mad aunts, uptight English explorers and the model for Matisse's blue nude. If you know Tom and you've read anything else ("Half Asleep in Frog Pyjamas"! "Jitterbug Perfume"! "Still Life with Woodpecker"!), you don't need me to tell you that this book is fun! You don't need me to tell you that here (in this distant land with open sacks of saffron and turmeric, with vermin . . . etc etc) you will find the silliness of Brautigan mixed with the erudition of Vonnegut. It's another filibuster. Business as usual.
Rating:
Summary: Weirdness and Madness, I Like That in a Person
Review: I was thrilled to read Tom Robbins had a new book a couple of months ago. I was also thrilled to find he was coming to the area for a book signing. I never thought I'd get to meet him (brief as it was). He is certifiably insane and his book a sheer joy to me. Unlike most books I have read that I know the ending by page 25, I never know where he is going and how he will get there. His humor and quirkiness is wonderful. He says his next book will probably be in 2007. By that time I will definitely be a part of the CRAFT club, but hope I'll be able to enjoy it as I have all others. Fierce Invalids and Another Roadside Attraction are my favorites.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than nothing
Review: Anything that Tom Robbins writes is better than almost anything that any one else writes. However... What is up with this Switters? I really didn't find him interesting or enlightening, just verbose, pompous and self absorbed. He didn't develope as a character through the course of the book. I'm not sure that I ever got to know any of the characters very well. Maestra? Should have been more about her. Suzy? Two-dimensional. Domino? We only see these women from Switters perspective, which is, to say the least, not very flattering. And where does Switters end up, back in the Bangkok bargirl scene, having learned nothing from any of his three gals. I guess my biggest complaint is that this book just wasn't much fun! Too many hard to follow monologues from Switters. He may be interesting in real life, but he does not deserve to be one of Tom Robbins main dudes.
Rating:
Summary: Liberation Unlimited
Review: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates is a wonderful, big fierce book which need not be judged only in comparison to the author's earlier and extremely formidable accomplishments. Because it is on the money in terms of current content, such as cyberspace, yet rooted in antiquities, such as shamanic travel, it is truly both timely and timeless. Of course, that is not to say that a fluency in both American culture and the Queen's English will not prove enormously helpful to the reader in staying tuned to the author's playful and erudite cadence, but there is something here to set up and upset almost anyone. For this Mr. Robbins deserves to be roundly congratulated. Elements which might seem far fetched, like the sage with a pyramid-shaped head engendered through a DDT-induced mutation and amplified by mahogany boards intentionally placed to accentuate the pointed, call to mind the entirely plausible and historical, such as the deliberate bandaging of pretty little Chinese feet to make them even smaller. However, the criminality of such practices is certainly not lost on Mr. Robbins, who, like the shaman, attempts to incorporate their magic through the serving up of this very rich literary pudding as a just dessert for those who would can the uncanny, corner the infinite or repress the irrepressible. And when the venerable Mr. Switters does find himself caught between the feminine antipodes of his soul's yearning, he most sensibly does what any self-respecting Zen master would, that is, get onto a table and squawk, with joy and abandon, in the avian spirit which he, though unwittingly, most surely has incorporated into his own luminous substance. This book, in short, is an extremely serious joke with enormous transformative power with no ulterior redeeming motive whatsoever. I recommend it highly as an entertaining and compelling literate jest / fest for all those individuals interested in improving their vocabularies while simultaneously loosening the fetters of their convictions. As for rating it, "the million star hotel" model of sleeping out in the open desert far better describes this voluptous and voracious foray into the holy physicality of being than does the restrictive penta-sidereal system favored by petro-business travel guides or on-line booksellers. In the tradition of Aldous Huxley's Island, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates is a powerful exhortation to humankind rise, shine and (mustang)sally onward.
Rating:
Summary: Great audiobook
Review: One of the best audiobooks I've ever heard. Howlingly funny and yet poetic prose, read clearly and with meaning. Buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Tom Robbins' Best Book
Review: I have always loved Tom Robbins for his wonderful and quotable turn of phrase. However, Feirce Invalids tells a very compelling and deliciously interesting story that takes the reader from Seattle to South America and finally to the the Middle East. The character line-up includes the wheelchair bound CIA operative, a sexy teen-age temptress, a saucy excommunicated nun, and a guy with a pyramidal head. This is a great read and I would highly recommend reading this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Great fun, but only for the initiated, please.....
Review: Angelic CIA cowboy Switters is a conceptual pastiche caught up in the gauziest filigree of a plot, but that's okay because just hangin' out with him is riot enough. That this book seems more like an anecdotal dossier, a character study told in Robbins' always entertaining figurative fireworks, doesn't take it off my "must read" list. "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates" is a hoot -- w/ a sinister Vatican, a metaphysical Invacare hovercraft, several naughty nuns, a pair of stinkin' jackals, and a subatomic particle point. And that says nothing about shaman "Today is Tomorrow" and his mentoring Switters on the trip of trips in the "too goddam vivid" Amazonian rain forests. Vintage Robbins? Well, yes and no (much like the vibrating sub-quark polarities residing at the base of everything. See p. 404.) Unfortunately, as sometimes happens with the trinkets and shiny junk that Robbins' "magpie plots" have commandeered, the smooth circularity of elements feels frantically stapled together toward the end. Other Robbins' titles are more satisfying as seamless and sensuously fun narratives; for me, Jitterbug Perfume comes immediately to mind. But don't misunderstand; Switters is definitely NOT victimized the way Wolfe's "A Man In Full" is: by brutal abandonment of the creator's sense and sensibility. Robbins' tale is even protean enough to survive the collision of fact and fiction regarding the "Third Secret of Fatima," which Pope John Paul inconveniently chose to reveal as part of the Millennium wahoo early in 2000. His and Robbins' versions are different; so who to believe? Regardless, get this entertaining, quotable nugget for yourself, and pick up any of three or four earlier titles for your innocent, inexperienced buds. Guaranteed: If you still annotate your books at all, "Yep" and "Ha!" will be filling the margins (along with the typical Robbins' "Oh-la-la!'s")
Rating:
Summary: How very odd!
Review: This is my first Tom Robbins book. Perhaps that is why I liked it so much better than the seasoned Tom Robbins readers who's views can be found around mine. I found the author's writing style a pleasure to hear. (I actually listened to the audio version.) While his writing style was not riveting, his prose were increadible. I don't think I have ever read an author who is more gifted at analogies. Frequently I found myself losing my place in the story because I was too caught up in thinking about an analogy that was just made. Perhaps this isn't Mr. Robbin's best book, I am testing this by listening to the much ballyhood Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, but it is temendously fun.
Rating:
Summary: Erleichda!
Review: Too god-damned vivid! Too cotton-picking mad! Too outrageously fantastic! I can't wait to read it again.
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