Harvest [Mass Market Paperback]

Without a doubt, this is a full-on B-horror idea which, if you're even considering reading this book, is probably fine with you. Unfortunately, Nicholson got stuck somewhere between a fun B-horror novel and a character driven novel. Nicholson spends the first several hundred pages introducing character after character. I'm sure the purpose was to make us feel like we knew the characters but, for the most part, they were un-engaging and, in the end, unimportant to the story. It felt like a writer TRYING to make the characters come to life rather than actually doing so. The best part of the novel--brutal action and horrific twists--doesn't really kick in until the last 75-100 pages. I feel this story probably would have been better served in novella form.

If the premise intrigues you and you're able to go into it expecting nothing more than an average B-movie in book form you shouldn't be too disappointed. Otherwise you might want to pass this one up.

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Enter the town of Windshake. It's a quiet mountain town, only just beginning to be discovered by developers. It is typically populated with a thin veneer of middle class who overlay the larger collection of dirt poor white trash. Moonshine stills, logging roads, mountain cabins and trailer parks all combine to overcome any real influence from the nearby small University, where Tamara Leon teaches.

She had moved out of the city in order for her husband Robert to take a job at a local yokel radio station, the only job he could find. Bye-bye city life, hello Moose Lodge and Hog Calling. Tamara carries a heavier weight on her shoulders than just moving her family out into the sticks, for she suffers from what she calls "The Gloomies", which is nothing more than a form of ESP.

The second major character is Chester Mull, a crotchety mountain man who's day is filled by drinking moonshine on his porch with his ancient hound dog, at least until the mountain begins to glow a sickly green and his friend Oscar stumbles into his yard looking more plant than man.

Scott Nicholson has done an absolutely tremendous job with this novel, bringing the small town people into fully fleshed reality, and revealing Windshake as a place you can not only see but smell and taste and feel.

The Harvest is one of those stories that is about the entire town, with a few foremost characters leading the hunt for what ails their community. The usual problems seen with books like this are shallow characterizations, which you certainly won't find here. The sinful Preacher, the overly religious Parishioner who is falling for the church secretary, the white trash trailer park queen, the dope smoking teenagers, the fat and lazy sheriff, the excessively arrogant mayor, the successful moonshiner; all are completely introduced as individuals who you will love to hate, or hate to love.

Tamara and Chester make an unlikely team when finally they meet up, and with a couple of fellow believers they undertake the daunting task of destroying the creature that has extended its tendrils into their town.

There is something to be said for a joyfully entertaining, wildly unrealistic adventure into a nightmare landscape or horror and helplessness. Not every book is a work of art, and not every work of art is entertaining, so if you want a hoity-toity art book, go pick up a Tolstoy. But if what you are looking for is a roller-coaster ride filled with aliens, inhuman hunger, green guts, bizarre plants, gaping earth-mouths, and squishy things that go bump in the night, then grab a copy of The Harvest and settle in for the ride. Enjoy!