Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Book Review for Star Wars Book Club for September: Star Wars: Red Harvest


Book: Star Wars: Red Harvest by Joe Schreiber

Edition: Paperback

Description:

Unlike those other Jedi sidelined to the Agricultural Corps—those whose abilities have not proved up to snuff—Hestizo Trace possesses one extraordinary Force talent: a gift with plants. But suddenly her quiet existence among greenhouse and garden specimens is violently destroyed by the arrival of an emissary from Darth Scabrous, a Sith Lord with a fanatical dream poised to become nightmarish reality. For the rare black orchid that Hestizo has nurtured and bonded with is the final ingredient in an ancient Sith formula—crucial to the Dark Lord's obsession, but with consequences far worse than fatal. Now, spawned by a heretofore unknown virus, the rotting, ravenous dead are rising, driven by a bloodthirsty hunger for all things living—and commanded by a Sith Master who lusts for power and the ultimate prize: immortality...no matter the cost.





Rating: 5 stars

Review:

Star Wars: Red Harvest is a wonderfully terrifying zombie story set in the world of Star Wars. On the Sith planet Odacer-Faustin, Sith Lord Darth Scabrous was working on a formula for immortality. Despite his experiments on a few of the students at the Sith Academy (who are believed to have gone missing), however his plan still required a rare flower, a black orchid. Where other bounty hunters had failed (and paid the ultimate price) to bring Darth Scabrous the real orchid, bounty hunter Tulkh manage to do just that. However, Tulkh also brought along captured Jedi Hestizo Trace, who works for the Jedi Agricultural Corps, due to her Force connection with the orchid.

Once the missing ingredient was added to Darth Scabrous' formula, the experiment worked. However, not in the way it was intended. Because when the missing student/test subject was given the potion, it resulted in a virus that reanimated his body into a zombie. During the chaos of the zombie attacking Dark Scabrous, Hestizo Trace was able to escape from Scabrous' lab. However, she will be in a fight for her life as the Sith Academy was quickly becoming overrun by zombies transforming anyone bitten into one of them.

Among all this horror and chaos, Jedi Rojo Trace had traveled to Odacer-Faustin to look for his abducted sister Hestizo. But he was not the only one looking for her, Darth Scabrous was still trying to achieve his goal of immortality and would need Hestizo to complete it. 

This is a fast-paced and a well-written story that becomes even more panic inducing and scary for the characters as it moves along. While reading this I found myself wondering if any of the characters especially Hestizo and her brother Rojo would even survive. Especially since the virus combined with the Force seems to make the zombies even more deadly. Red Harvest is a really good story and I feel like the author truly delivered an interesting and horror filled Star Wars take on a zombie story.

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