Rating: 
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.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, but not his best.
Review: I spent most of highschool bowing down to Robbins. As a wannabe writer, I truly believed that he was the best. I gobbled up each book I could get my hands on and cried myself to sleep when I had completed the collection. But I clearly remember the day that Skinny Legs and All was released and I ran to the bookstore with anticipation, only to find myself three weeks later saying to Robbins newbees, "don't start with Skinny Legs, it will turn you off." What had happened? A mysterious shift in the world of the bizzare. And I am sad to say that it never got much better. Now I'm not saying that Frog and Invalid are bad novels, but they just don't match the brilliance of the early books. Maybe I am just exausted from the avalanche of simile and metaphor...take a break man, sometimes it's just better to be straight forward...So if you are a fan by all means read, there are some great moments...But if you are new, go back in time and pick up Jitterbug, Woodpecker or Cowgirls...you won't be sorry.
Rating:
Summary: Should I stick my head in the Sand?
Review: Not one of Tom Robbins best books. I think this might be due to that fact that his character development may be slowly sliding downhill. You never really know how any of his characters feel, just what they might be thinking or feeling (superficially). I got the sense that they were set up soley as vehicles of social critique. That's fine, I suppose, but I for one don't want to listen to someone rant. I want to hear a story (with a balance in perspective). And again, like in Still Life With Woodpecker, there is alot of unecessary drug use. It just doesn't seem to play a part in the book. I have to admit too, that I grew weary of the characters being know-it-all, obnoxious men. It seems to be a running theme, in his more recent books. There are better books out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Tom Robbins books are the only ones I read again and again
Review: And this one is the best yet. Philosophical, lyrical, wacky, mystical, musical... Honestly I can understand why some people (maybe a lot of people) don't like Tom's books. I have never recommended Tom to a friend, because I don't have any friends I think would "get it." Maybe he and I are together on some cosmic plane. But I relish every word, every sentence. So many ideas. How many times I stop reading just to think about something he has said. You could rush through, but better to savor. I am sure I will read this book a dozen times or more.
Rating:
Summary: one of my two favorites...
Review: I read two books while traveling last summer, and I don't think I could have possibly found better literary companionship than "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates" (along with "Just a Couple of Days," which was equally amazing). A word of caution: be careful that you do not read "Fierce Invalids" as if it were some other Tom Robbins novel. Allow it to define itself. Read it for what it is instead of prejudging it, and you'll have a great book in your hands.
Rating:
Summary: Robbins is losing it
Review: I've been a huge Robbins fan for a long time. Not since the beginning; I had to go back and read Another Roadside Attraction after falling in love with his other stuff, beginning with Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Still Life With Woodpecker is wonderful. Jitterbug Perfume is sublime. I thought Tom Robbins couldn't miss. Skinny Legs and All didn't quite work for me; Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas got sort of boring; now Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates has convinced me that Tom Robbins has lost it. This is unbelievably amateurish writing. It is careless, sloppy, often just plain stupid. Robbins can still turn a phrase like no one else; there are some belly laughs here even for the most jaded Robbins fan. But he's gotten lazy, or something. He's always been preachy, but he used to work hard at integrating his sermons into his narrative. No more. There's hardly any narrative left, here. It's all sermonizing of the most painful adolescent kind. The novel reads like the work of a 16-year-old would-be novelist who is only a few years or perhaps months away from the realization that he'll never be a writer. He still thinks he can do it, though, and writes on, page after agonizing page. The difference, of course, is that Tom Robbins used to be a writer, and lost his touch. Lost touch with what a novel IS, and what feels good on the tongue and ear, and what's funny ... I personally hope he takes a sabbatical or something, and rediscovers his touch. I've been saying for 20 years that we only have one Tom Robbins. I'd like to get him back.
Rating:
Summary: Great Characters, Great Dialogue, Not So Great Premise
Review: Walking into this story is like walking into a carnival. The characters are bright and interesting. The scenery grabs your attention. And there are lots of bells and whistles to amuse you as you make your way from page to page. In this story, the carnival is the characters and Mr. Robbins' fantastic use of language and dialogue. But when I finished the book, I wondered where the payoff was. Although the book was a pleasant diversion, I could never make any real connection with the story.
Rating:
Summary: Yawn...
Review: I owe this, my one and only Tom Robbins experience, to a monthly book club. I'll admit it -- I didn't finish it. At the time of our meeting, I had only 20 or so pages left. And since that time I just can't bring myself to finish it. I just don't care. I usually feel a dutiful responsibility to finish every book I start, let alone one I've invested myself into for several hundred pages. But I just have no inspiration to finish it. I found it tedious and full of tangential diatribes on one subject or another. I'm told this isn't one of Robbins' best books. It'll be awhile before I'm willing to invest my time in giving him another try.
Rating:
Summary: Hyperkinetic Hyperbole
Review: Tom Robbins' propensity to focus on oversized appendanges, obscure cults, and gratuitous sexual innuendo have finally done him in. Better to sit down with Carlos Castenada - better yet, Francois de La Rochefoucauld - than waste time with Robbins' version of reality. How many times does one have to be reminded that Switters knows the word for "vagina" in seventy-one different languages? If that's what his editor(s) feel is needed to sell his books, then the book publishing industry is in trouble. Whereas most of the characters in his earlier work - Another Roadside Attraction - were full of quirkiness, the cast of Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates are not drawn from the same inkwell. The author's description of the convent in Syria ring true but the manner of Switter's arrival there and his "rescue" of the nuns from papal disgrace is stiltingly hard to accept. Perhaps one must suspend belief while reading this book. I'm sure that surfing the web pages of the OED would provide more entertainment.
Rating:
Summary: From a devoted Robbins fan...
Review: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates was indeed another brilliant work by one of my favorite authors. Mr.Robbins if you can here me....I bow to your genious weaveing of words with such true artform. I have never read a book by Tom Robbins that didn't inspire me to ponder and leave me waiting anxiously for his next. Bravo!
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