There’s something to be said for a straightforward action movie. Sometimes I just want to sit back and be entertained, knowing exactly who the bad guys are, who the good guys are, and watch that back and forth before the inevitable climactic showdown. Red Harvest Moon by Miles Hurt to me embodies this kind of story.
To set the scene – we have a village, a small horde of rampaging ghouls, and a few outcasts. If you don’t know where this is going, you’ve probably never watched a certain kind of action movie. Our outcasts are two bandits, Ren and Crimp, and a woodsman called Druun. Ren is the primary protagonist, although the POV jumps around a lot between many of the characters in the novel. He may be a bandit, but he’s also a warrior with a hidden past, part of which we slowly see revealed in flashback throughout the story. Crimp is his friend and partner in crime, and their banter is pretty amusing, for the most part. Druun is no slouch in the fighting department either, and he has a complicated relationship with the village that we quickly discover.
The three of them are beset upon by a band of ghouls, led by a cultist and an elite warrior, a scouting force from an evil empire. After their escape they (reluctantly on the part of Ren and Crimp) agree to warn the nearby village of a potential impending assault. The opening sequence I found to be quite awkward to read, with the POVs jumping slightly too fast for me to get a good handle on the characters, and I struggled to picture the initial skirmish and escape. I did come close to DNFing at this point, but I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did, as most of those issues went away after that sequence had finished.
From that point on it becomes a fairly standard defend the village against raiders plot, complete with missing children, a cowardly reeve, and factions arguing about the best course of action. These sections were all fairly well done, if a little predictable. The characters, especially the villagers, were all mostly two dimensional, with fairly clear and simple motivations and actions, which worked fine for a story like this, but isn’t something that I’m normally much of a fan of.
For those with an aversion to gore, there are some fairly gruesome scenes, including one scene early on where a ruined eye gets scooped out with a spoon. But that did seem to be the exception rather than the norm. The villains themselves are an interesting variation on the evil humanoid creature theme, but like most of the rest of the characters, their motivations are pretty simple.
Once I got past the opening scenes, Red Harvest was a well paced page turner of a book, with a solid climax. I’m cutting it from the competition, but if you’re in the mood for a book that feels like a hollywood action movie, I’d definitely recommend giving this one a go.
-Adam
Our other SPFBO 7 reviews:
- Finnian’s Fiddle by Chandler Groover
- Breakaway by Dezarea Dunn’
Check out our SPFBO 7 intro post here.
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