Steve Lynn's Book Blog

                          Hello again my friends!  It's been too long that i have been able to follow up on my first Review of Stephen Kings Doctor Sleep.  

     Today I bring you a short and quickly paced read by author Norman Partridge called Dark Harvest.   This book was a really fun read, It flowed like a quick old fashioned campfire ghost story and i love that.   The book takes place in 1963 on Halloween night.  It follows the main character Pete McCormick but also follows the town itself in this strange tradition they call the run.

                    The run takes place every Halloween and pits all teenage boys from 16-19 years old out into the night to face off against the monster they call the October Boy.   This town is very strange in that they have what they call "The Line"  pretty much nobody is allowed to leave this friggin' town.  At all.   So the winner of the run not only wins their parents a brand new car and house along with free pretty much everything in this town for a full year, But the kid is allowed to leave the town.  Or you know....Maybe not.   I wont get into that but i will say i blew through this book in about an hour and although some of the "Twists" are really easy to see coming a mile away it still manages to not only make that not matter, but makes it the fun of the simplicity of the book.

   So lets get to rating this bad boy.  My review will be setup as follows.  I will judge based on :

Story

Characters

Writing

Pace

   they will be graded up to 5 stars and i will not grade or discuss the ending of the story. 

Story

★★★★

  Solid story.  If done in any lesser fashion this could have been bland and blah, not because of the actual premise but because you see one of the big story "Twists" so easily from afar.  Though Partridge pulls it off nicely and it reads like a damn fine camp fire horror story.  Quick and too the point.

Characters

★★★

  With such a small book and quick pacing you don't get a lot in the way of depth within the characters.   But it's not really a huge flaw in this type of story anyway.

Writing

★★★★★

  I must say i liked how straight forward of a story teller Norman Partridge turned out to be.  very to the point and has a very cool narrative voice that isn't the same old stale paragraphs.   It really feels like he's just sitting there telling you a story.

Pace

★★★★★

  As i have said already this is a very fast paced book at only 176 pages.

 Overall i give Dark harvest ★★★★★ 5 Stars!   I was pleasantly surprised by this book and it gives my first two reviews back to back 5 star ratings.  I recommend this book as a quick read and especially if you read it as a Halloween time book like i did.  I say give it a read and let me know what you think of the book.  After all it's only about what we all like, and i grade on nothing else but my enjoyment of the books.  Till next time, Be well. Read Well.