Following the success of last year’s “Death Troopers,” “Red Harvest” gives us another zombie/”Star Wars” mash-up.
This time instead of zombies attacking and eating the brains of storm troopers, it’s the Jedi taking on zombies. And not just any Jedi, mind you but an isolated training camp of Sith apprentices. On the surface it seems to have a lot of potential for a lot of fun and mayhem within “a galaxy far, far away.” But just like “Death Troopers,” “Red Harvest” comes up just a bit short for a lot of the same reasons.
The biggest thing working against the book is a lack of familiar characters. At least “Death Troopers” had a big, twist cameo halfway to keep things going. Nothing much here. Instead, we get a lot of characters who are simply in the book to become zombie fodder over the course of the story. In a zombie movie, shallowly developed characters who are zombie food isn’t necessarily a horrible thing. In a novel, it doesn’t quite work as well since we don’t have as much investment in the characters. The story does develop a handful of characters beyond a basic outline, but it doesn’t necessarily go anywhere new or interesting with them.
Of course, I could be thinking about this too much for my own good. At times I found myself clicking off my brain and just going along for the ride. I enjoyed those moments, but minor niggling details kept cropping up to take me out of things.
That’s not to say there aren’t some cool moments here. It’s Jedi battling zombies.
But it the end, it should be cooler than it ends up being. File this one under a good attempt but ultimately a disappointment.
Star Wars: Red Harvest by Joe Schreiber
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: LucasBooks; (December 27, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0345511174
ISBN-13: 978-0345511171
