Customer Reviews

The stainless steel rat wants you

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I've been enjoying Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series, especially the superb audio versions produced by Brilliance Audio. Slippery Jim DiGriz is a con artist who's been forced to work undercover for the Special Corps, an intergalactic investigating agency. Each of these short novels starts with him (and now his family, too) hiding out from the Special Corps and living it up on other taxpayers' money. Each time, the Special Corps traps him and sends him off on a fast-paced, dangerous mission that usually involves saving the galaxy in some way.

This time aliens are invading, so Slippery Jim, with the help of his beautiful and deadly wife and their delinquent teenage twins, infiltrates their lair by disguising himself as an alien who wants to join their army. How could he possibly know that his alien costume is so sexy that he'll have to fight off male suitors while he's trying to save the galaxy?

The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You is another entertaining offering from Harry Harrison and narrator Phil Gigante. It was fun to see Jim and Angelina's twins grown up and following the family traditions. Unfortunately, this story relies on some of the same plot elements that we've seen before -- it seems fairly simple to save the world when your enemies are all brainwashed by outdated moral philosophies, you've got a time machine on hand, and the laws of physics bend at your will.

Still, if you're willing to overlook all that, then these stories are definitely entertaining, especially with Phil Gigante reading them.

This book is much funnier, and the situation certainly helps. War is looming with an alien race, and yes, they are pretty much bug eyed monster types. The Stainless Steel Rat and relatives have to do something about it.

Infiltration is tricky, but all undercover super thief/spies are good at disguise. He can even do alien sexy. Pretty funny.

What a relief to read The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You after the disappointing Stainless Steel Rat in Hell! What a difference fifteen years can make!

This Stainless Steel Rat is the Rat we all fell in love with - biting sarcasm, acerbic wit, the lapses in attention that land him in trouble, the daring escapes from that trouble, and a plot that moves briskly at all times, always staying a half step ahead of the reader. Just under 150 pages, it is just the right length; short enough to be read in one sitting, but long enough to draw the reader in.

The only downside to this one is the packaging. Contrary to the title and cover propaganda, the Rat does no recruiting (beyond his lovely yet dangerous wife and the twins). A better title would have been, The Stainless Steel Rat: Bug-eyed Alien Sex Goddess. Read the book and you'll see what I mean.

The title of the latest escapades of the "Rat" is a bit of a stretch of the imagination as it suggests images of vintage WWI era posters of Uncle Sam recruiting enlistments for the United States military. What actually occurs, though, is that after freeing his family members form various forms of incarceration the Stainless Steel Rat plays upon the gratitude for a good deed done and gains their support in battling an assortment of bug-eyed-monsters (BEM) bent on invading the human inhabited galaxy and making it thiers alone. At times silly, each BEM is more fearsome and funny than the last resulting in a plesant mixture of mayhem, hilarity and adventure. Enjoyable to the last, James Bolivar DiGriz proves once again that no rust has tarnished his stainless steel rat's hide.

I have read & enjoyed a number of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books, but this has got to be the best one yet. The book is loaded with the same slap-dash sense of humour and spontaneous action as found in the other SSR books, but this book's clever, well thought out plot puts it far above them. Slippery Jim's final solution for dealing with the slimy alien problem-makers is ingenious and satisfying, as is his surprising insight to the behaviour of the galaxy's sadistic grey men.