Book Review: Reaping the Harvest (Harvest Trilogy book 3) by Michael R Hicks

What can I say about Hick's 'Harvest' trilogy people, if you haven't read any of the three books, you really should, and he even makes it easy for you by giving the first book in the trilogy, 'Season of the Harvest' free across all e-book reader formats, so whatever you read on, there is no excuse.

Hicks weaves a tale of terror across these three books borne out of his mistrust of GMO's, or rather his mistrust of the self regulation of the companies behind GMO's as allowed by the US government. 

An organism has been discovered by a few people that seems to have been around on planet earth for hundreds of years. It has achieved sentience and can mimic human form.  The organism believes that it is the ultimate life force on the planet and that human kind are nothing more than a food supply for them, but as yet and even after being around for lord knows how long, their numbers are too few to take what is rightfully theirs, the whole planet.

They devise a plan to genetically modify wheat that once ingested will wipe out the human population.  

Once in human form the harvesters as we come to know them, are undetectable except for the insane frenzy that they send cats into when they come near them.  They kill by deploying a poisoned stinger from their bodies and they take the form of any human they kill with all the knowledge that the human possessed, after digesting the body.

Reaping the Harvest is a non stop blood bath from beginning to end with first the Russians nuking large parts of their own and adjoining countries, including Moscow and then the Americans doing the same to some of their own cities in a bid to slow down the spread of the larval harvesters.  These creatures have not and will not attain sentience, they only have one goal to consume anything in their path human or material, anything that is carbon based is digestible to them and as they eat, they multiply and there aren't enough high explosive rounds or bullets or manpower on the planet to stop them from spreading.... The age of the human is not just collapsing in on itself it is being consumed and it's final annihilation is only months away in this final book of the trilogy.

Can Jack Dawson and Naiomi Perrault find a solution that will slow their demise down and reverse it ......

Hicks has written a clever series here and joins up all the dots for all three books.  He writes well and gives you a story that is gripping as it is horrific but compels you to turn page after page......

Editing for Kindle:  5 out 5 
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5
Chapters: 43
Page length: 373 

Book Review: In Her Name: The First Empress Trilogy - 'Forged in Flame'

Look inside Amazon UK here
Look inside Amazon US here 

What can I say about Michael R Hicks and his 'In Her Name' books that I haven't said before.  The guy knows how to weave a story creating whole new worlds and people who live and die by a code of honour that is so savage that it takes your breath away, yet, at the same time they are a species endowed  with as much passion for love and life as they have for killing......

Hicks has clearly spent many hours in deep thought thinking about the characters of these books so that he can pass on a clear and descriptive narrative to us, the readers; introducing us to a new species on a new planet and he just isn't giving as a story he is giving us a living history of a species in meltdown over hundred's of thousands of years and then going back and telling us how it came to be.

This is the eight book in the In Her Name series by Hicks and his writing get's better with each book, that's not to say that the writing was in any way bad or poor in the previous books as all seven that came before, drew you in from the first page and you, at least I, didn't want to put the books down until I had devoured each story, and neither, I believe will you. When they ended I do believe that I suffered withdrawal symptoms and being an avid reader with lots of other books by other authors in my TBR pile, after reading a Hicks book you find it a wee while before you are ready to go elsewhere.

I am not going to spend any time on characters or back story in this review, as part of a series it will be meaningless to you and if you have read any of his books you will already be familiar with them.  What I can say is, if you haven't read any of these books and you are a fan of science fiction, war, and love with an anthropological study of a alien race from the beginnings of time when the Earth was still in a primordial pool and then bypassing us by before finding and killing us (and even when they are, you still can't help but like them!!!) then these books are for you.

Book 1 - EMPIRE
Book 2 - CONFEDERATION
Book 3 - FINAL BATTLE
Book 4 - FIRST CONTACT
Book 5 - LEGEND OF THE SWORD
Book 6 - DEAD SOUL
Book 7 - FROM CHAOS BORN

Book 8 - FORGED IN FLAME

and if you head over to Mr Hicks web page here you will be able to nab a free copy of Empire to get you started 

The pages for Hicks Books on

Amazon US is here  and

Amazon UK is here 

Ratings:

Editing for Kindle: 5 out of 5
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5

Book Review: Bitter Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 2) by Michael R Hicks

Look inside Amazon UK here
Look inside Amazon US here

Bitter Harvest, book 2 in the Harvest trilogy by Michael R Hicks with Book 3 scheduled for publication in 2013.

It took me a while to get in to Season of the Harvest, book 1 in the Trilogy, back in 2011. But once in, I found a fast moving, modern, scary crime thriller, with the added zest of a bit of science fiction thrown in to mix things up.

Summary The Harvest books are dealing with a deadly and intelligent insectoid like creature who are able to take over a human body and perfectly mimic the person taken over! It is not known where these creatures originated from, whether they have been lying dormant on earth for millennia or whether they have come from space. What is known is that they can be killed but normally only after they have wiped out 98% of those trying to kill them and as is the way in these situations, some escape..... In book 1 the Harvesters, as we have come to call them, could not reproduce and were working on a way to genetically modify crop seeds that once planted and turned into food for the human population would rewrite the DNA of humans turning them into Harvesters.  Jack Dawson and Naomi Perrault and the rest of the EDF along with the US Govt. who finally came to believe in the threat, thought they had solved that problem ........

Bitter Harvest, as one would expect, takes up where the first book left off with out heroes who were declared terrorists by the US Government having been giving their own Agency to track down the missing bag of  genetically modified bag of grain seed.  It has been a year now and they still haven't managed it.  The new administration and President, still have difficulty in believing all that they have been told and in how catastrophic the Harvesters would be to the human race, if allowed a foothold on the planet, and decide to close down the new Agency, terminating all of its employees almost with immediate effect!

As any good writer will do, Hicks uses this to good effect to reintroduce the missing bag of seed with horrifying consequences. Without giving to much away, as is always difficult when writing a review.  The bag has fallen into the hands of a disenfranchised scientist who without knowing the deadly secret potential for devastation that it holds; all he and others in that field  know, is that the company who produced the seed were trying to introduce a seed that would improve the worlds food supply, and that the seeds produced for that purpose would be worth millions to be sold off to competitors!

And then planet earth starts to burn: India, China, Russia, Brasil, France and then back to the USA and  then you are (if an e reader) holding your finger or thumb over the button desperate to turn each page as you can't believe what is happening as we jump from continent to continent to raging battle after battle and only those few who have dealt with them before and who fully know how to try and kill them having that information sequestrated by their own government, does the full horror of what is happening and just what the original Harvesters did to the seeds unfold.  The story unfolds and Hicks has written it in a way where you just have to keep turning pages.  People whom we met in the first book, we meet again, they are hero's, but Hicks just as easily kills these people off just as the Harvesters are killing the general population while the governments of the world close in on themselves in the usual indecisiveness that seems to affect them in reality, and you find yourself wishing that maybe a Harvester or two should be let loose upon them......

The Harvesters couldn't reproduce in Season of the Harvest, and were still a terrifying and deadly problem for mankind; You may not want to know what they do in Bitter Harvest, but will you be able to resist peeking,  and, can mankind survive? And then that bugger again leaves us on the edge of planetary destruction and says wait and see in 2013, Oh how I sometimes hate authors ;-)

catch up with Mr Hicks at: @MR_Hicks_Fans

Editing for Kindle:  Good
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5
Chapters: 35 plus an epilogue
Page length: circa 394 NO PAGE NUMBERS I really do wish you guys and Amazon would get your acts togther.

The NHS are you Worried, You Should Be!

The Government are forcing through changes to the Health and Social Care Bill and I have major concerns about it.

Competition, and the opening up our of health service to any qualified providers will lead not only to fragmentation of care, but also potentially to a ‘two tier’ system with access to care defined by a patient’s ability to pay.

The above sentence was taken from a statement issued by the Royal College of General Practitioners, the body that your local doctor belongs to. Now it is fair to say, I suppose, that although the Body representing GP's has issued the statement, read it here, there are some within that Body who are clearly happy to go along with and support the proposed changes by the current government.

So, why am I worried about about the governments proposed changes.  Well on a couple of counts, not least of all that the Lid Dems in the coalition are letting them get away with it, and two, the Conservatives have for so long been the party of denationalisation of every public institution.

While I have been in favour of some of the sell off's, in the main they have been disastrous for the British public:

BT- Was the first to go in November 1984 and I had no problem with that but that paved the way for everything else and with few exceptions it has been a nightmare for the poor and working class of the country.  Once the Conservatives got a taste for it it was only a matter of time before everything else was in their sites and so it continued. And to be honest New Labour were not much different in their outlook on this either


Utilities- Gas, Electric and Water Sold off on the cheap and the British public have then been hammered into the ground with ever increasing costs and lousy service.

British Rail - broken up and sold off yet the private companies are given millions of pounds in taxpayers money every year

The one thing they couldn't sell of was the Health Service although many Conservatives for years have openly voiced their opinion that this too should be subject to 'market forces', and at last they seem to be driving this through if the statement by the RCGP proves to be correct.

I have an acquaintance on Twitter, an American Indie Author named Michael R Hicks.  He recently left a well paid government job to take up writing full time and he recently posted a series of blogs as a means to help others who were thinking of giving up their day job to concentrate on writing full time.  His first blog on the subject, read it here, aimed at fellow Americans, I am sure though, that it  will give many in this country pause for thought as they read it. And it gave me pause for thought as I considered the implications that the American system would have on us here in the UK if we allow any government to allow a full or partial sell off of the NHS as we know it or by allowing 'market forces' to dictate  the kind of treatment we all take for granted at the moment and that is largely free to all in the UK, even to those who are not entitled to it!

There is absolutely no doubt that some form of reform is needed, but as more and more people are thrown on the scrapheap of unemployment or as I have said before, that there are not the jobs available due to changes in technology, how will the 'masses' ever be in a position to pay for medical care.  Michael Hicks is lucky, but then again that is relative to his particular situation, in that he can afford a basic level of health insurance, but again and through choice, a level greatly less than what he has been used to for himself and his family.  How many of the working class people in this country could afford what he is paying, I couldn't, could you?  I am not sure of the conversion rate but he is paying $600 per month, so that's about £450 in our money but in reality if they have to use the cover it is going to cost them a whole lot more.

I can see a lot of BSkyB subscriptions having to be cancelled although the cost of that would probably not even cover one months health care, so as The RCGP says in its statement, (there will be a), " ‘two tier’ system with access to care defined by a patient’s ability to pay."


I am astonished that the Lib Dems are allowing this to be put through, but I suppose that that is 'the price of power' in this instance.  As I said earlier The RGCP as a body have issued their statement against it, but others are for it and some changes have already taken place and from my point of view at least I see no logic to it.  I wrote last year that I has seen my doctor and that an appointment was to be made for me to see a specialist.  Short version of that was, that my appointment was to be booked through a 'new' agency set up by a group of local GP's, who would be paid for this service, but the booking still had to go through the booking system of the hospital, read that here.  In other words we have two groups booking the same appointment and both groups costing money! Now if that is part of the reform, where we are spending money needlessly on two sets of staff and two booking systems to make one appointment, how long before there is no money for treatment and every patient is going to have to pay for the treatment they need at the time, or before, the treatment is given?

Of course Politicians, Civil Servants and Bankers will do all right out of this as they will, like Michael in America prior to giving up his government job, be well looked after with their health insurance cover, but for the masses they are going to have to rely on charity and luck to hopefully receive even a basic level of assistance when they fall ill and unless they are given a free prescription along with their charitable medical visit, the first will be pointless as the latter will not be affordable....

As a result of some of the things happening in his own country Michael has started a new website called Reboot Society and he has some interesting ideas, ideas that are not only applicable to an American perspective, take a look... 

So, what do you think about our governments ideas?

And,if you want to sign an e-petition against these changes, click here 


Update:  Doctors who backed the changes are now changing their minds. Read the article in the Guardian here.

The Journal of Avery Moore by Michael R Hicks

If you have read my blogs and reviews and you know me on Twitter you will know that Michael R Hicks falls into the category of, “My Favourite Authors.”

The Journal of Avery Moore was a bit of a departure for him from his usual writings and for me as a reader, in that it was a horror story,.....

I often think, as I suppose many readers do, of meeting my favourite authors, well, I think I am going off the idea of actually meeting Mr Hicks, anyone that can wake up in the middle of the night with such a twisted story embedded in his mind might not make for a best friend, there has to be a hint of madness lurking behind those eyes.

The Journal Of Avery Moore is a short story charting the kidnapping, imprisonment and torture of a nice man, who happens to be a lawyer, yes I know ,but there are nice lawyers out there I know two...

Avery Moore chronicles the depravity of his time in captivity, without knowing why he is here or indeed how long he has been there. And, when that is finally revealed, that is the final act that almost tips him into the insanity that he has been slowly slipping into, crucified on a medical bench during his captivity.

This is a short, well written book with thirteen short chapters but they are so intense in places that you do find yourself breathing heavily especially when Avery wakes up and discovers his predicament and how he has been ‘stitched up”. As they say, “Oh My God” who would have thought of writing something like that, Well Hicks clearly did and it works, scary but riveting.  I really did not think I was going to enjoy it, and I don’t even know if that is the correct description to use after reading this one.

I think he was right to do it as a short story and bring it to a conclusion which was fairly explosive and understandable under the circumstances.  I started reading it during lunch yesterday and completed in the evening.

BUY IT HERE

5 out of 5 stars

The 0.99pence /0.99cent Kindle Book

I started on twitter about 3 years ago and didn't do too much with it until this year when I started to really find and engage with people on it.  Unlike huge celebrities and some others, I do not (and this is not a blog looking for followers) have a vast following on twitter, but what I do have is around 130 odd followers with a fair number of those people with whom I interact with.

Another quirk in my followers, that's not to say that they are quirky, well some are and you know who you are, is that the vast majority of them are authors and another quirky fact is that 99% of those are Indie authors.

Now, if you do not know what an Indie author is, it is someone who for whatever reason, sometimes by choice, sometimes not, who self publishes their own works, taking on the role of writer, agent, publicist, marketing guru and accountant, and while in many cases, holding down a paid day job or are home makers.

I recently noticed a thread on twitter between a couple of authors with one commenting that,    "$.99 for an ebook increasingly a signal to readers that a book from a writer new to them is dreck. They move on."

Now, I am assuming that most people reading this will know the basics of Twitter and you will know that sometimes you are a bit (if I could meet the person that coined this phrase I'd smack them in the teeth) of a peeping Tom, listening in on a conversation between others, but that is the nature of the medium.  So, anyway, essentially what was going on here was that one author chappie was saying to the other that the $.99 book on E readers was doing him and others like him a disservice as people like me would see a book retailing so cheaply, think it was pretty rubbish and not entertain the thought of reading it!

Well, if you have read my previous blogs, you will know I am not scared to jump in where I am not wanted...so I entered the conversation with the comment that if that was in fact the case I would not have read either of their books and I would not be interacting with them, giving them a piece of my mind, but this got me to thinking about this some more and here it is!

Since I got my Kindle of my wife for Christmas 2010 I have downloaded 42 books that averages out at 4.2 books per month and I have also still bought about 6 books in written form so that takes my monthly average to 4.8 books per month.  Now I do have to confess that while I have a voracious appetite for reading and I can be reading 2 or three books simultaneously there are periods where I will go weeks without picking up Kindle or book, so of the 48 books I have so far purchased this year I have still to read 7 of them but I think that's still pretty good going.

Now here is a snapshot of the books I have bought via my Kindle at a reduced price:

"Cambridge Blue" by Alison Bruce cost £1.00                 "Open Season" by CJ Box cost £1.00

            














"The Bitch Proof Suit" by De Ann Black          "In Her Name: Empire" by Michael R Hicks cost Free
 cost  £0.86

The AI War by Stephen Ames Berry cost £2.14

Now, these are only a few of the 'cheap' books that I have purchased, and prior to buying them I had never heard of any of the authors, not one.  I now proudly own all 7 of Michael R Hicks published offerings and keep giving him a hard time on Twitter to write more.  CJ Box, the same, never heard of the guy but now own 8 of his novels.  De Ann Black, romantic comedy, loved it and bought her next book "The Strife of Reilly".  Allison Bruce, never heard of her, wonderful crime drama set In Cambridge England, scoping out more of her books. Stephen Ames Berry, never heard of him and full on SyFy not usually my cup of tea but a great entertaining read. Samples of other books downloaded and entered on my Amazon wish list to come back to later.

So my point is, that if I hadn't bought these 'cheap' books I would never have gone on to read even more of the wonderful books that the author has published.  And before you think that all I do is purchase the cheaper end of the market, that is also not the case.  Julian Stockwin, Harry Sidebottom, Conn Iggulden, Lee Child, Alexander McCall-Smith and of course CJ Box, Mark Beaumont, all fit into this category, all non Indie Authors, whose books are rarely discounted, have all been bought through Kindle or on hardback in the last year, so there is no discrimination there.

The wonderful thing about the Kindle is that it also allows us, the reader, to download a sample of authors book with a few chapters in it, read it, see if we like it and then purchase or discard it.  That's how I found most of my Indie Authors.  But the bottom line is, if I liked it, I bought it, I didn't worry too much about the price.

I suppose the bottom line and the difference between my Indie Authors and my Established Authors is: The established ones have the publishing houses behind them and normally have a following that is willing to pay the price, and sometimes, since discovering Indie Authors I do find myself muttering about the cost of the Established Authors when I am reading a book with a flowing and compelling storyline every bit as good as 'Publishing House' authors.

So, while I can understand the frustration that Indie Authors must have at the pricing disparity, and I have no answer for it here, I have to say that you are not doing your readers a disservice by producing the truly wonderful books that you do.  I am sorry that you are not receiving the accolades or reaping the financial gains of others, but I for one am delighted with all my purchases of my £0.99 pence books which have lead to many enjoyable reading hours with the addedd benefit of making many wonderful Twitter friends in those authors I am reading, and even some I haven't quite got round to yet. Mr Halstead.

The Caspian Gates (Warrior of Rome 4) A (provisional) Book Review

I discovered  Harry Sidebottom  a couple of years ago after the first three Warrior of Rome novels had been published, so came to him late.  But, as is usual with some books that you stumble upon unexpectedly I was impressed and quickly took to Ballista the central character and his familia.

I have to say, to begin with, The Caspian Gates was a bit of a disappointment.  It wasn't just the irritating insertion of hyphens in names and words where previously there was none, e.g. Hippothous became Hipp-othous and then back to Hippothous. Vinegar became Vin-egar, these are just a couple of examples and I don't know if that was down to poor proof reading or in translation to Kindle format but irritating it was.

But it was the story telling itself that I found well below the standard of the first three novels.  Dr Sidebottom, to give him his proper title, is a Fellow and Director of Studies in Ancient History at St Benets Hall, and Lecturer in Ancient History at Lincoln College, Oxford.  And he clearly approached the first three novels with these lofty credentials using his immense knowledge to draw out the characters and the descriptions of the various parts of the Roman Empire where Ballista was fighting, but while drawing on his immense knowledge his lecturing and teaching credentials were tucked away and hidden from sight writing the novels as an author intent on bringing to the reader a collection of stories full of reality.  The hierarchy and inner workings of the Senate and the Empire, Roman fighting tactics, humour (great humour), and loyalty.  All of this interspersed with homilies and nods to the great writers and philosophers of the day a great combination, well written and gripping, keeping the pace at a level that made it difficult to put these books down.

So, Harry Sidebottom clearly set out, as an author who wanted to give his readers a gripping tale and he succeeded, but, in No 4 I think he forgot to take of the College Dons robe and began to write this one as a lecturer, as Dr Sidebottom, and therein lies the problem.  If you read any great or even good novel the writer writes in a way that is engaging to the reader.  The characters have a dialogue with each other and the central character has a dialogue with the reader, much the same way as Michael Caine has with the watcher in Alfie however in the first 6 chapters of The Caspian Gate the dialogue is as sparse as pimples on a new born baby's bum.  A novel with characters telling a story should be dialogue heavy it should be like a teenagers acne riddled face, you can't see the features for the plooks and spots and we shouldn't be able to see the page for the interaction between the characters.  In this book so far, I am really struggling not to just close it down on my Kindle and move on to something else.

I have just read Julian Stockwin's latest offering, Conquest, and Michael R Hicks's latest from the In Her Name series, Dead Soul.  Both are writing about a central character and both have written a number of books in the series and as always the characters engaged the readers and their books were gripping and I resented having to go to work, or go to bed, in fact to do anything that we should be doing in our daily lives, that would take me away from these books, and that is how I felt about Harry Sidebottom and the first 3 books in the Warrior of Rome series.

I've never done this before, not that I have done many reviews, but, I just felt that I had to come and do an early review of this one as I do feel let down by it.  I will not stop reading it and I will come back to this review  after I am done, when hopefully I will be able to update it with a much more positive review.

In Her Name: - A Book Review

Indie Author Michael R Hicks, who goes by the Twitter name of @KreelanWarrior  published the latest instalment to his In Her Name Series of books on Monday 3rd October.  I immediately downloaded it from Amazon on to my Kindle at the amazing price of £2.21!!!!

This is a brand new book, number 6 in a series, and it is immediately on sale at the bargain basement price of £2.21.  The thing about that is, that while the price may be bargain basement, the story telling is anything but and indeed if you click on the link above to Michael Hicks site you can even get one of the books in the series free.  Daft or what, well no, not really.  I think Hicks knows exactly what he is doing, he also knows, without shouting it from the rooftops, that he is a skilled story teller, and that once you read one of the books in the series, he has you hooked like a master angler, who seems so effortlessly to catch his large fish and then begins to reel it in to it's eventual doom.  But, for the reader of an In Her Name book it is is not the doom of the fish that awaits you it is the surprise of finding a SyFy writer who weaves a seamless story of Love and War, Pathos and Humour and Space battles akin to the great Sea Battles of our History.

In her Name was released in the same way as the Star Wars film genre with the up to date (in terms of the future setting) books of:

Empire 

Confederation 

Final Battle

and then, like Lucas, he wrote and released three further books telling us how humanity, who had been colonising space for hundreds of years but had never discovered any alien life, stumbled across the one Alien life force that they would die regretting the meeting, and not understanding, WHY!

These books are:

First Contact

Legend of the Sword

Dead Soul 

If you have never read a science fiction novel in your life YOU MUST NOT be put of by the genre, Hicks does not sprinkle his books with unintelligible gobbledy gook that would put most of us of, no, his is a thought provoking opus of tenderness one minute followed by unforgiven brutality the next! In Empire a young boy witnesses his parents slaughtered and his planet decimated by the Kreelan Warriors.  There is the tenderness and growing love between him and another orphan in the 'workhouse planet' he is assigned to by his human rescuers, and then there is the renewed hatred for the Kreelans as he is captured and his second home is destroyed by the Kreelans!

All three books are fast paced and unlike many books it is sprinkled with characters who all have  a story to tell.  These stories all add to the spiders web of intrigue that Hicks so skilfully weaves adding political infighting between politicians and soldiers who believe that they are in a winnable war and are jockeying for their own seats of power, to Warriors of The Kreelan Empire whose only desire is to fight and Die with Honour for Her, The Empress.

Dead Soul, brings those of us who have discovered In Her Name, up to date with the Kreelans and how the war was started.  It seemed shorter than the previous novels, or was it that I was just reading faster,  and at the end the only regret you have is, that it did end!  You feel, when reading one of these books, elated, you feel hatred for the Kreelans, then you don't, how can that be, they are killing machines, they do not give up, they do not retreat and they do not regroup when they themselves are being killed in battle, they just keep coming, survive and win, or die, there are no alternatives in Kreelan warfare.    

It is this single mindedness, that Hicks I think, uses to bring out the best and the worst in his human characters .  The humans have to be as equally ruthless in their own defence, they have to be ingenious in the craft that they bring to survival and Hicks captures all of it and presents it to us in a way that makes us tearful and poignant, angry and aggressive but most of all he makes us not want to stop turning pages to see what happens next.

In recommending this author and his books to you I really am at a loss to tell you where to start whether it is with the first three books published, which are also available in an omnibus or now that he has finished the prequel of three books 'from the beginning', but, whichever way you choose to go, you will be hooked!

Good reading 

Series rating: A definite 5 stars out of 5

See also: Season of the Harvest - Book Review (also by Michael R Hicks)

Book Review - Season of the Harvest by Michael R Hicks

Season of the Harvest a fast paced thriller by Michael R Hicks  set around the world of GMO''s, or, Genetically Modified Organisms!

The story begins with an FBI agent breaking into a laboratory in an attempt to gather evidence that the company running it is modifying crop seeds in such a way that when introduced into the food chain, they will change the genetic make up of the human population on earth.  He dies, horribly, during this failed attempt and we discover that he has gone rogue from the Agency.

His friend also an Agent, while banned from getting involved because of his closeness to the murdered agent, begins to investigate off the books and the story develops into one of frightening terror.

He discovers that the 'people' behind the modified crop seeds are not in fact human and while we do not find out whether they are 'alien' from another planet or whether they are as indigenous to earth as we are, we discover that the seeds have been modified in such a way that once introduced they will rewrite OUR DNA and we will turn into them.  To do this, they have to ensure that their seed replaces the normal food seed that is planted around the world and that the seed banks, containing samples of every food and plant seed that currently grows on the planet and that are housed around the world are destroyed.

The EDF, a group who have been set up and are based in an old ICBM base in California are leading the fight to stop, 'The Harvesters' as we discover the name given to the protagonists of this book and who are vile shape shifting creatures that can take human form .  Hicks borrows slightly from 'The Termintor' in that cats are the only ones able to detect 'The Harvesters' either in their normal or human forms and we find that they play a big part in the story warning the heroes and us when The Harvestors are about to make an appearance.

The action is set in USA but the battle moves to Norway as the only surviving 'seed bank' comes under attack, after all the others around the world are destroyed.   Of course the evil plan will only work if The Harvesters have human conspirators and when the President is blown up The vice President is sworn in and we discover that he is a conspirator who says, " I know there is a special place in Hell reserved for me for what I've done".  And to discover what would make a US President have his own place reserved in Hell, you will have to read the book.

Hicks gave us his spectacular and futuristic Human vs Alien space opera with the In Her Name series which once started you cannot put down.  In Season of The Harvest he has brought us back into the here and now and gives us a sight of what could be.  As he points out in his notes at the end of the novel, the governance and development of GMO's seems to be wholly unregulated in the USA and they do not need, like Europeans,  to put it on the food packets, informing American that they may be consuming something that is not as natural as some of us would like or believe that our food is au natural, so all in all an excellent earth bound and contemporary subject matter that turned out to be a explosive book to read.   I give it 5 stars out of 5

Best Wishes