Rating: 
Summary: A Pretty Good Follow Up
Review: For those of you who have read "Fight Club",you will understand when I say that the characters in "Survivor" could not compare to those in "Fight Club". Tender Branson was somehow lacking in intensity compared to Tyler and the Fight Club character(s). This book DID have the same attitude (satiristic) and the same overtones(anarchist) as the first book. The main character of Survivor, Tender ,was sort of Betty Crocker meets McGuyver , and it didn't seem to come off as well as maybe the author had planned. There was nothing lacking in the way this book was written, however, and I really enjoyed how the book "counted down" to Tender's ultimate demise. The book certainly wasn't a bad effort by the author, I just wish that I could have FELT for the characters as much as I had in the Fight Club. There were no plot twists or surprise endings....this book was straight foward and blunt. A good read if you enjoyed Chuck Palahniuk's other works, as it contains the same not-so-subtle humor and Anarchist references.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book...
Review: This is a great book.. Everyone else's reviews pretty much sum it up. I just wanted to add something that just came to me...The next setting for the hit TV show SURVIVOR is going to take place in the Austrailian Outback... and in this book called SURVIVOR the plane Tender Branson is on crashes into the Austrailian outback. Chuck Palahniuk has now show me something beautiful on two levels. Hopefully people will order this Survivor thinking it's the book for the TV show.
Rating:
Summary: Don't worry
Review: Well, Chuck Palahniuk has done it again! With Survivor, he has taken the reader even deeper into the unspoken pop deitrus with his cynical and morose prose. Don't worry, the wrenching in your stomach is normal, the energy in your bloodstream is to be expected, and the weight of the bizarre is just enough to still keep you balanced. Palahniuk has created a survivor, of a creedish death cult, who has become something more ugly: a celebrity. He constantly challenges all that we in this society accept on face value, who we choose to celebrate. In this way, the narrator, narrating his story into a flight recorder of a plane as it heads into a mountain, brings you into his obscure little world of drugs, exercise, and fame. So far in fact, that your world begins to look much more appealing than under the lights. Survivor is not Fight Club. They have the same elements, the decay of society, stripping the flesh to the bone to see what it all really looks like, not what people tell us. The desire to break the chains and work on instinct. but, the details of this novel are far more interesting than fight club. Survivor asks the reader to judge what is the purpose of a life, to accept it, or to change it. you have no way out but to choose. Be daring, be open to new perspectives, be someone who doesn't turn a smirk at a novel like this because it is strange and a little morbid. Be the one who takes the chance, accepting that not everyone thinks or feels the same as you. Be an owner of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Another Twisted Social commentary.
Review: Once again Palahniuk manages to make a bizarre, convoluted story believable. A perfect commentary on what makes a 'star' in today's world and how what you see is definitely not always what you are really getting.
Rating:
Summary: Welcome to the World of the Creedish Cult
Review: If you have seen and/or read Fight Club and liked it, this book is for you. Tender Branson raised in a cult run town in Nebraska has an intersting look on life. You would to if you came for that place. A place where if you are not firstborn you have to leave the town and age 17 only to become a cleaning, cooking, botanist and an etiquitte expert "slave" to some rich family. The only human interaction you have is a social worker and people who call you for crisis intervention. Seeing it that way its no wonder his life was upheaveled when he meets a woman with a certain clairvoyance. Not to forget the fact that his whole cult town commited a kind of group Sepuku when the outside law tries to intervene. Knowing this you are supposed to kill yourself ASAP. Tender Branson does'nt. He's holding on, to what, he doesn't know. Now someone appears to be offing the other "enslaved" survivors. Is he next? Without spoiling to much, he goes from cult boy to indentured slave to steroid injecting tele - evangelist to accused murderer to anti - christ fugitve to hijacker. Palahniuks presentation and writing style is superb. He does some neat tricks like stating the book at page 270 something and counting down to one. The whole narrative of this story is taken from the Black Box of Flight 2039, cool stuff. I must say every bit as good as Fight Club. A must read!
Rating:
Summary: Get ready for the ride of your life!
Review: By all accounts, Chuck Palahniuk's "Survivor" is more like an intense ride than it is a novel. However, this is not a bad thing at all. CP's writing is smart and slick, full of satire and social commentary. With all these deliberate things he has going on he also tells one hell of a great story. One that hangs with you long after you turn the last page. Read this book and above all else, enjoy the ride.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant satire and apocalyptic vision rolled into one!
Review: Chuck Palaniuk (say it ten times fast) has recently stormed onto the popular literary field, thanks to David Fincher's amazing adaptation of his underground novel, FIGHT CLUB. Hopefully, if he keeps writing books this good, he can give up being a mechanic forever. SURVIVOR begins on its final page, and shoots backwards towards page 1, always reminding you of its approaching demise. Along with the novel, the narrator is apporaching his own demise, as he pilots a commandeered airplane waiting for it to crash and explode. In order to preserve his life story, he is speaking into the black-box on-flight recorder, hoping to wipe himself out and attain immortality at the same time. What is his problem? Well, he is the last survivor of a suicide cult, a former indentured servant in the "real world". He also narrates of his tranistion from nobody to media messiah back to nobody. In it, Palahniuk takes on a wild ride through a satire of modern society in all its little nuances. Everything from Lobster eating to TV networks gets raked over the coals in this incediary novel. ALthough the book, like FIGHT CLUB begins to self-destruct about three quarters of the way through, the story is so compelling in its banal gruesomeness that you can't help but read it. Palahniuk is a magician who will keep you hypnotized, glued to each page until the final end of both his protagonist and the book. Oh, and did I mention that the book is also riotously funny? It is. So in other words, one of the best books I've read in awhile.
Rating:
Summary: Ain't it unfair?
Review: Survivor is, perhaps, the best fiction novel I've read. Since Fight Club, of course. Unfortunately, Mr. P. is stuck having a first novel so good that all his successive novels will be compared to it. To cut a long story short, Survivor is almost as good; the main character, Tender Brannon is an extremely interesting character. He's basically an apathetic cleaning man with an evil sense of humor who is transformed into a massive media messiah. And, of course, lots of crazy stuff happens; there's all the violence, ludicrous plot twists, and random (but useful!) tidbits we've come to expect. Read this book. Really!
Rating:
Summary: A great sense of originality and humor
Review: I haven't exactly read the broadest spectrum of books. Authors ranging from Burgess to Barker to Vonnegut to King. I must say that Palahniuk delivers a fresh, crisp, original style that keeps a great pace and is funny in an insightful way. Of his other two works, 'Fight Club,' and 'Invisible Monsters,' I'd say this is the best We follow around the protagonist, Tender Branson, who is the sole survivor of a massive cult suicide that took over two thousand lives. Because of the way the members of the cult life were sent out on their own after a certain age, Tender did not know his 'time was up' until the authorities caught him first and prevented him from killing himself. He is then brought up to fame and fortune and thrust into a world beyond anything he has ever known. Taking a similar path as 'Fight Club', 'Survivor' takes dark humor to a different level. This could offend some (as I'm sure 'Fight Club' must have), but for myself it was a new doorway for laughter. Palahniuk takes the most ungraceful and horrible things you could imagine and just makes them a riot. The perplexing and odd characters keep the book interesting because they are nothing you have ever quite experienced before. This novel has a nice mix of different qualities that are all done thoroughly and with care. A great effort by a great author.
Rating:
Summary: Better than Fight Club? Yes, BETTER THAN FIGHT CLUB!
Review: the title there says it all... a book written in reverse, genius. This book demands to be read and experienced. Chuck is da man! wait till they make a movie of this one! David Fincher better direct, no one else can handle the story.
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