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 

Gabriel's Revenge (Evan Gabriel Trilogy) Book 3 by Steve Umstead

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Book 3 in the trilogy of Commander Evan Gabriel was as fast paced as the previous books.  Written in an easy writing style with pacey action and well described action scenes, both on the surface and out in space.

I am still completely enamoured with the idea of a neuritics implant that allows us to receive messages and files just like a computer, but in our heads and gives us control over electronics such as lights and doors and machines, just with a thought.  Off course HE had to introduce the concept of HACKING and overloading someone else's 'system' and ultimately their life, which would be a bit of a downer, but hey ho, everything has a bit of risk attached to it - still love the idea though.....

So, as is usual, Gabriel gets burned and singed along the way while others around him on his team die, nothing new, but deaths on the team are kept to a minimum on this one as Gabriel heads back to Mars which has effectively had a bloodless coup in it's two main city's after rescuing the main city dome's governors son on Eden [wow that was a mouthful to type, now trying saying it aloud]  after rescuing the main city dome's governors son on Eden, hey ho....

The South Americans have hired some Chinese Mercenaries including fighter space ships but Captain McTeirnan on the Marcinko makes quick work of them with some classy weapons upgrades while at maximum speed and in stealth mode at the same time as he drops Gabriel and his team out the loading bay doors in a shuttle against tremendous g forces, exciting stuff, yes it is actually, but you have to read it for yourself to see.... (And Captain McTiernan, I'm sure he was a character in another syfy novel I read recently, sounds awfully familiar).  Gabriel's lady friend, Lt Renay Gesselli has been taken hostage by the South Americans and he is on a mission to get her back and you can feel his rage, which his team 2nd in command is battling to keep under control.

This book then, wraps up the trilogy nicely, still with lots of action, unanswered questions from the previous books are answered and Gabriel may finally be able to put some of his demons to rest along side the body count .... A good ending.

Editing for Kindle: 5 out 5
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5
No of Pages: 305
Chapters: 39 + an Epilogue

Links to other reviews in the Evan Gabriel trilogy;

Gabriel Zero Point A Prequel
Gabriel's Redemption Book 1
Gabriel's  Return  Book 2

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

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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.

Book Review: Gabriel's Return by Steve Umstead

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Book 1 in the trilogy of Commander Evan Gabriel was reviewed by me earlier, a link to that review is shown below and in which I commented;

"Gabriel's Redemption tell us the story of Commander Evan GABRIEL from the NAF, North American Federation, which comprises America, Canada, Cuba and Mexico and is head quartered in Toronto after most of the seaboard states have been swept away. The South American Federation largely made up of Brasil and Argentina after that continent is blown apart by nuclear war is a bit player with ambitions. GABRIEL is on the run, just because he doesn't want to be found, and hiding out in flea bit hotel in Jamaica after being dishonourably discharged when an off world mission on 'Eden' goes horribly wrong and he is (believed to be) the only survivor. We don't get to learn to much about this previous mission, which maybe we could have done as it left a big gap in the character of the 'hero' " 

Gabriel's Return,Book 2:  After being reinstated into the NAF in Book 1 and carrying out a successful mission, Gabriel is posted to Mars along with his new team to help and assist the local Mars governments and the Mars Defence Force to clean up the corruption on the planet.  After receiving opposition from the locals he and is team come to be accepted as they clean up the criminality without imposing penalties on the honest traders in the domed cities.

He is summoned to the office of the Governor of the largest city and finds that she wants him to take his team back to Eden where he lost 'all' of his team on his first mission to that planet.  The terrorists are still operating there and the governors son, studying at the university, is taken hostage along with all of the other students in residence. Also received is an apparent call for help from the only other surviving member of Gabriel's first visit to the planet, who was found alive and until the moment the message was received, thought to be dead! If it wasn't for the other surviving member from his first mission there, Gabriel would probably have declined the request to rescue the kidnapped student, as the mission wasn't sanctioned by the NAF!

As they set of on their mission Gabriel has to brief his team and tell them that not only will they have to fight the terrorists but that almost all of the indigenous plant life is as deadly as a terrorists bullet but what they don't know is that the kidnapping is all part of a bigger plot that trebles the chances of this mission being as deadly as the first mission to the planet!

Umstead writes flowingly and the book moves along at a cracking pace keeping you interested and turning pages.  It's not a terribly long book, just over 300 pages and as the narrative keeps you going, it will not take long to finish reading.


You can connect with Mr Umstead via Twitter @SteveUmstead

Related Posts - 
Book Review: Gabriel's Redemption by Steve Umstead

Book Review: Gabriel; Zero Point by Steve Umstead

Editing for Kindle /iPad: 5 out of 5
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Page length on kindle /iPad: 321
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5

Book Review: Gabriel's Redemption by Steve Umstead

I have been threatening to read one of Steve Umstead's books for some time now but kept putting it off.  The reason I was putting it off was that I had recently got back into the science fiction genre through two other Indie authors and whose books I really really enjoyed and then I read another one recently that left me largely disappointed, and that's the thing with a particular genre it is either good or very bad not really much of an in between ground to rest on.

So after reading the bad one I was again reluctant to pick up another author that I hadn't visited before, but I did with this one and was pleasantly pleased that it was not at all unsatisfying.

Gabriel's Redemption tell us the story of Commander Evan GABRIEL from the NAF, North American Federation, which comprises America, Canada, Cuba and Mexico and is head quartered in Toronto after most of the seaboard states have been swept away.   The South American Federation largely made up of Brasil and Argentina after that continent is blown apart by nuclear war is a bit player with ambitions.  GABRIEL is on the run, just because he doesn't want to be found,  and hiding out in flea bit hotel in Jamaica after  being dishonourably discharged when an off world mission on 'Eden' goes horribly wrong and he is the only survivor.  We don't get to learn to much about this previous mission, which maybe we could have done as it left a big gap in the character of the 'hero' (but I think that it may be covered in book two of the series looking at the teaser at the end of this one, still...)

Setting aside the 'Eden' question for a moment, Gabriel is recalled by an old commander and fed a story whereby he needs GABRIEL's special skills to lead another off world mission to close down a planet which is producing the latest high tech drug.  A drug that in it's production, an indigenous life form on another planet is being subjected to barbaric torturous methods to remove the gland needed to produce it.  It is difficult to write to much about the plot as spoilers are all to easy to give away the story.

Humans of the future have been surgically enhanced with neuretic enhancements allowing them to receive and respond to information, and holographic messaging in their minds eye, cool, I like that and it gives them the ability to intercept and decode messages, open doors, arm  weapons, all sorts of cool stuff.

The book offered a lot but didn't deliver as much as it offered in the main because the calamity of the 'EDEN' mission hung over the whole book like an unanswered question.  SANTANDER, the main protagonist, who we sort of saw was going to be the baddy from something we had hinted to us, turned out to be that baddy after all , but, then when we did learn that he was the baddy from that excursion we didn't learn about, it was dropped like a hot potato (mind you to then tell us about it in detail at that juncture would have taken the story off tack, so... )

It will al become clear and hopefully you will see what I mean WHEN you read the book.  Yes I am saying read the book, as apart from that one glitch (my view)  it is a good story and although there is not much action to talk about, I do like my action and the bloodier the better, the book is one of those that simmers just below boiling point.

Umstead has an easy flowing writing style and I think there are nods in there to other syfy such as Star Trek, remember the Kobiashi Maru, the ship where Kirk cheated, there's a ship in this called the Maru and a couple of other references to other syfy  shows and books as well.

The narrative flowed along seamlessly between Gabriel and his team being put together and their time between Earth and the target planet and between them and the main off world protagonist, and I have classified this under Science Fiction and Thriller, but I hope that book two doesn't take quite as long to get to the action and become a proper thriller.

Even although I have a few criticisms of it I can always tell how much I enjoyed a book by the time it takes me to read it, and that time is precious to me so if I pick up a book and I keep putting it down and going back to it over a few weeks, while I might like it (and I've bought it so I am darn well going to finish it) it's not the same as really enjoying a book enough to read over a couple of days.  I started this one on Thursday evening and completed it today, so definitely worth a read.

And as to my critique over the unanswered question of Eden I picked up in this plot style in another book recently and the author came back to me and said that 'You have to remember that this is the first in a series and so it will be developed on in the next instalments.' fair comment, not sure, I just don't like it where the emphasis is placed on something so heavily but it is really left hanging in the air.... But that might just be me.


Editing for Kindle: 5 out of 5

Reading Enjoyment: 4 out of 5
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5