Customer Reviews

Earth Vs. Everybody

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Spoiler! Swartzwelder wins. In his latest Frank Burly scifi extravaganza, John Swartzwelder does not disappoint. I'm a big fan of anything the man has ever written, so maybe this is a biased review, but I'm assuming that if you're considering picking a copy of Earth vs. Everybody for yourself, you're probably a huge Swartzwelder fan as well.

How Swartzwelder is able to keep the Burly series from going stale is a mystery. I keep buying these books expecting the one that finally lets me know that Swartzwelder has had it, but that book never comes. This book, as far as I can tell, is Swartzwelder's take on Gulliver's Travels. Burly bounces from planet to planet, interacting with their inhabitants as only Frank Burly can, that is, as a dumb white American. God bless him. This book has everything. It's got space travel, time travel, epic space chases, convoluted mystery plots, and jokes, did i mention it's got jokes?

In Earth vs. Everybody, Swartzwelder reminds his devoted followers why they will never stop buying his books the week they are released. No, not every single joke was the funniest thing I'd ever read. Yes, I looked like a crazy person, laughing uncontrollably as I read the book in public.

If you're a Swartzwelder fan, stop reading this review and buy the book already. If you've never read Swartzwelder's stuff before, I've only got the same advice. Buy this book. Hell, buy all of Swartzwelder's books! If more of them sell, maybe Swartzwelder will take to writing more than one a year!

This book is very good and funny. I am very satisfied with my purchase and all of his books in this series.

I always look forward to John Swartzwelder's annual literary outing and I haven't been disappointed yet.

His newest book, "Earth vs. Everybody," features further exploits of the sometimes-detective Frank Burly. This time, after taking a very unsatisfactory vacation, Burly decides to go into a different line of business - crime. However, there's something different about the boss of CrimeCo (Formerly Crime & Sons).

While Burly's exploits with CrimeCo are funny in their own right, they're really just the jumping off point to intergalactic trials and war, homelessness for profit, bullying aliens and a bit of time travel thrown in for good measure.

Now, this isn't Swartzwelder's best book but let me stress that it's still outstanding. The only reason I say it's not his best is because I thought his previous book, "Dead Men Scare Me Stupid," was one of the funniest books I've ever read. I was busting a gut through the entire read and it was hard to live up the expectations that I had for this new book.

"Earth vs. Everybody" didn't have me laughing like "Dead Men..." but it is still hilarious, has many laugh-out-loud moments and is a great read that I'd recommend to anyone who likes to laugh.

Another five star "humor/science fiction" book by John Swartzwelder that deftly combines goofy slapstick humor with intriguing reflections on who we are and why we are. In Earth Vs. Everybody, our ne'er-do-well protagonist Frank Burley faces down everybody and everything else in the universe, convinced that to survive, we must compete with everything, everyone, and even time as we pass through life. As our careers advance, we see the next new thing take over our limelight before we're done with it, and we begin to feel utterly lost in our day-to-day struggle with existence. When we do find a successful career, it is usually "entirely by accident" (pg. 88). As Frank's private investigator career flounders, he looks to where it seems easier to make a living and earn fame at the same time - crime. "The enthusiastic cheers of the crowd decided it for me. Criminals get all the money and all the fame. All us honest guys get are cases we can't solve and bills we won't pay..." (pg. 9). On Frank Burley's Earth, where organized crime, entertainment agents and comedians are all cut from the same cloth, it's not much of a stretch to include an intergalactic criminal trial of an all-electric boss named Theremin (apparently named after the spooky-sounding electronic predecessor of the Moog synthesizer). As this trial gets out of hand, Frank flees Earth, and heads off into space and time where he discovers that crime, talent agents, humorists and failure are everywhere. In the end, Frank finally succeeds at a little crime. But it's very little and not very satisfying, like life according to Frank Burley.

John Schwartzwelder has created another great book. If you have read any of his other books and enjoed them, and I don't know how you couldn't enjoy them, then buy this one too. Frank Burly is back in another great adventure...in space. All the books in this series are very well written. Just like a Simpsons episode, this as well as all his books are overflowwing with humor of all sorts. There are simple easy to get jokes along with intelligent humor, and alot of jokes that you have to pay attention to the storyline to get. I reccomend this book to readers of all ages and levels.

John Swartzwelder's farcical novels haven't been great from a literary standpoint, but they've still been real funny to read and have had entertaining stories as well. Based on everything I had read about "Earth vs. Everybody," it sounded like it would be one of his best books. Instead it was the complete opposite. The story gets off to a good start, but it sputters away quickly and the plot becomes an absolute mess. This time Frank Burly decides to give up his detective business and joins a criminal organization run by this person nicknamed Buzzy who's from outer space and his body is made up of electricity. After a while, Burly recognizes he's not very good at anything he tries to do for the organization, so, understanding how dangerous Buzzy is, he decides to contact the intergalactic police so they can arrest Buzzy. This brings a lot of attention toward Earth as many aliens from many planets come to watch the trial. They then start warring with each other and Buzzy is able to escape using Burly as his shield. This may sound like a long and interesting plot, but it makes up less than half of this short 133 page book.

The story really becomes stupid after that and really loses its focus. There aren't many jokes for the rest of the book, and the jokes that are there aren't very funny. To top it off, the ending is real slow, unfunny, and anticlimactic. That has been a gray area in all of Swartzwelder's books, but this ending is probably his worse.

Overall, "Earth vs. Everybody" is a real disappointing book. There are some funny things Burly says every now and then both in the dialogue and the first-person narration, but it seemed like most of the jokes in this book were too stupid to make people laugh. There are also some parts of the story that make it too unrealistic to take seriously or to even consider funny. For example, there are a few times when something happened to Burly that should have easily killed him, but he always survived and always seemed to be okay. Simply put, there are a lot of dumb things that happen in this story that prevent it from being funny or at least entertaining to read. It's bad enough that the plot is real weak and unorganized. This is easily Swartzwelder's worse novel.