Russ CrossleyReseñas

A strange sf story. Big corporations have taken over the universe and are battling each other. Until people from other galaxies arrive and change everything.

A very comical view on our current life and an ultimate possible consequence. Many american double entendres, some of which I undoubtedly missed. I had a difficult time getting into the story.½

No grammatical mistakes for me which helped make this book readable, entertaining and easy!
A great idea with lots of clever twists. Do think that there was too much build up to the 'story', setting the scene which meant that the actual exciting bit was rushed and needed more development.
Would recommend though½

I did not like this book. I could not even get through it. I have a ton of books that I want to read, but I have been putting them off because I said to myself I had to finish this book and write this review. Oh well. One out of two isn't bad.½

The author of this book calls it humour, but even bearing that in mind the book comes across as trying hard at being funny, but not getting there. The beginning is an endless stretch of beating the reader over the head with the theme of the book, while trating him to some really silly plot holes. hings get a little better once we get into something resembeling a story, but the book never gets past the problem of trying to hard and the need to tell the reader everything several times just to make sure he gets the joke gets tedious very quickly. The numerous references to Star Trek are too obvious and clicheed to be funny. Overall the book shows an idea that might have been interseting, but does not deliver a story engaging enough to carry it.

Okay, I must say that I'm not that impressed with Attack of the Lushites despite having an interest premise. The fast food wars have gone universal, with the two big guys--Galactic Pizza and Heavenly Sky Burger--trying to outdo the other and control vast regions of space, and as a result, people are now bigger than ever.

However, there were so many negatives about the story telling that it was quite painful to actually read this book. There were a lot of spelling and gramatical errors that should not have been there. There is a review below that claims something about some excuse by or from the editor or something or other. But these mistakes are distracting and make reading this less enjoyable. Hopefully this does get corrected.

But the gramatical and spelling mistakes aren't the only problems here. The story starts off slow--with the arrival of a snail mail letter to Heavenly Sky Burger from Galactic Pizza. This goes on for 60 pages, talking about how unusual this sort of thing is. In much of those 60 pages, everything is rehashed over and over again, dragging this into a painfully long read at just over 300 pages. This is an indication that this book could easily have been 50 pages shorter.

The story itself was hard to follow in places, where I think the author knew what he had in his mind, but he did a poor job of putting those thoughts down on paper, and he left some things out and rehashes other things. Yes, there is a lot of rehashing going on throughout the book. In some areas, you'll be going along, and then it seems as if the author must have taken a break from his writing and then came back to it, perhaps with a new idea, and forgotten what he had wrote just a page or two beforehand and contradicts himself.

And then, finally it ends. Well, it doesn't so much end but just fizzles out with a whimper. There is no climax, no overcoming story....everything just goes along and then, well, you're on the last page. Just totally bizarre.½

As already explained by the editor, the book is rifled with errors making the read especially hard for me, a non-native english speaker. But apart from that, the book was also hard to read due to the lack of a clear story line. I completely missed the shift from the 'fast food' universe to the 'drinking' universe at the start leaving me wondering for quite a few pages what had happened. The (somewhat) unexpected end did not really help here either, the introduction of yet another galaxy with a focus on smoking was on the one hand to be expected, on the other hand it made the story quite unbelievable.
As a great fan of humor books with the Hithchikers guide my all time favourite, I must say I was disappointed. The book is advertised as being in the same category and has some interesting views. But the writing style / storyline somehow manages to spoil an idea that could have been great. It might be the constant reference to other SF works or the constant hammering on the obese shape of the main players, but all in all this was not the enjoying read I had hoped for!

I am the editor for this book. I chose it because I think it is hilarious. But I can see now that something happened during our conversion. It seems when I uploaded it, all the changes Russ and I made showed up (rather than just the fixes). This left the e-version with a lot of typos, grammar errors, etc. I just wanted to let everyone know that those are all my fault, not the fault of the writer. I am in the process of re-editing it to fix all the mashed-up changes. Thank you to the early reviewers who pointed out the errors!

The book was rather interesting take on the future. The idea of a universe where fast food companies control everything is rather clever. I did find the plot to be a bit chaotic, often having to check back on other pages to figure out where the writer was going. Having read books that change characters from chapter to chapter, I know this rather difficult to write. I do feel that there was a bit too much jumping in the earlier chapters, that made more sense towards the end of the book. I would like to read the next book from Crossley, because I see the potential in his writing, but I would call this an impressive work, maybe a decent summer vacation read.

I thought I would check out the other reviews before writing my own. It was interesting to note I wasn't the only reviewer to be annoyed by the sloppy editing, inconsistencies (such as an interesting hover bike becoming a hover chair in the next paragraph), and references to Wall E and Star Trek;. Could Mr Crossley not think of anything more original than having a black communications officer and scottish engineer? There are some good original ideas, some good lines and a few humorous moments, and for a short time over halfway through the book, I was reading with anticipation about how it would all pan out. Unfortunately it didn't all come together cleanly ( some story telling was missing), and the ending (an original idea) felt rushed and finished abruptly. Some parts of this make believe world I got and others I am still confused about. If you can get past the continual gross eating references and find the good bits you will find Attack of the Lushites an okay read.

Attack of the Lushites is a fun story set in the far future where Fast Food Companies have taken over the Galaxy and are fighting for the highest market share. Jal Popover is just a simple mail room clerk for Heavenly Sky Burger, but when a letter from the enemy (i.e. the CEO of competitor Galaxy Pizza) arrives, he suddenly is faced with much more adventure than he bargained for.

I enjoyed reading Attack of the Lushites with its hilarious setting and strange characters and would read a follow up. What I found a bit annoying was the amount of typos, which was rather high (in the Kindle version that is) and at times disturbed the reading flow.

I do not want to be overly harsh but the only reason I fully read this "book" was because it was an Early Reviewer "book". I don't think it is too much for me to ask that a book have gone through some basic editing and revisions as needed before being presented as a professional piece of work. This feels like it was written in a weekend. Punctuation was lacking, words were misspelled, run-on sentences abounded, descriptions were redundant, and the author couldn't even keep the names of his characters straight! Another reviewer mentioned Bud was called Jal - well, Jack was also called Jal a couple times. I am a fan of humorous books, have read all of Hitchhikers (as this author claims to aim for). I have to say it failed miserably. It is not funny, not even slightly amusing. The author rips off several things from other franchises, most glaring being Star Trek. I wish I could say there was at least one thing I liked as I know a person wrote this and I want to be compassionate but... it was so painfully bad to read. There is nothing to redeem it.

I really wanted to like this book. There's a lot to like. It is humorous and well in keeping with the satirical science fiction tradition passed down by Douglas Adams and other (usually British) writers. The story is subtle where it needs to be and giggle-inducing obvious everywhere else. It is a good blend of the ridiculous and the sympathetic.

What unfortunately almost ruined it for me is the intolerable amount of what I call 'cosmetic' issues. In short, the book seems to have been sloppily edited. In one paragraph, the names were mixed up, (Bud is called Jal), other times sentences showed rewriting without taking out the changed part, leaving the sentences incoherent. While I don't think this is excusable for any published work, I usually let one or two slide, sometimes things get translated into the digital format strangely. But the sheer amount of errors that would have been so easily fixed was beyond my ability to comprehend.

As a story, the book was fine, a mix of Peter Jackson's 'Bad Taste' with the fat people from 'Wall-E.' If you enjoy puns and allegories, you will probably like it. The characters are not particularly complicated and people hoping for a deep cerebral experience will probably be rather disappointing. If you can get over the many grammar and diction errors, I would suggest giving it a try.½

The author compares his "Attack of the Lushites" to the legendary "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adam. The only similarities I can find is that both are works are written in English, and, unlike Zaphod Beeblebrox, both authors have only a single head. The premature death of Douglas Adams in 2001 and the publication of "Attack of the Lushites" in 2011 are both low points for the genre of Science Fiction Comedy. While"Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" is the definitive work of its genre, "Attack of the Lushites" is an embarrassment to its language.

I've given the book a single star rating, because LibraryThing doesn't have negative stars. The books would have a lower average rating, but user "JudithHarlan" is the publisher of the book and gave it 5 stars. I anxiously await her full review of this book, because I am a lover of good creative fiction.

When I receive books for free to review, I want to find something good to say about the book. I am very glad that my copy is an eBook and not a printed copy, Even though numerous words were tortured in its publication, at least no trees were killed. When I began getting books for free to review, I set a guide rule that I would read at least 50 pages of a book to give it a chance before I would give up on any book. This is only the second that I could not finish and the first that I could not read 50 pages. After 6 chapters and 39 pages I quit. Given a choice, I would prefer to be water boarded than have to read the entire book.

The author says the book is a satire about the nature of junk food, and in the forward he says "I [Cossley] would hate to think overweight people think I'm making fun of them. (since I'm one of them)." By comparison to Crossley's descriptions of his overweight characters, Uncle Ruckus of "The Boondocks" sounds like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I normally find the suggestion of burning books repulsive, but the cover illustration by Charlie Neimtz does suggest a good use for the book if you own the paper copy and need kindling to start a fire.