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Dead Harvest
Dead Harvest
Dead Harvest
Audiobook9 hours

Dead Harvest

Written by Chris F. Holm

Narrated by Brian Vander Ark

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

Meet Sam Thornton, Collector of Souls.

Sam's job is to collect the souls of the damned, and ensure their souls are dispatched to the appropriate destination.

But when he's dispatched to collect the soul of a young woman he believes to be innocent of the horrific crime that's doomed her to Hell, he says something no Collector has ever said before.

"No."

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 1, 2012
ISBN9781455885497
Dead Harvest
Author

Chris F. Holm

Chris F. Holm was born in Syracuse, New York, the grandson of a cop with a penchant for crime fiction. He wrote his first story at the age of six. It got him sent to the principal’s office. Since then, his work has fared better, appearing in such publications as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Needle Magazine, Beat to a Pulp, and Thuglit. He’s been a Derringer Award finalist and a Spinetingler Award winner, and he’s also written a novel or two. He lives on the coast of Maine with his lovely wife and a noisy, noisy cat.

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Reviews for Dead Harvest

Rating: 3.534246602739726 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

73 ratings11 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Reminds me of the TV show Reaper 2007 - 2009. Son of the devil collecting souls in funny ways and sticks his nose in screwing up the job.
    Shockingly the characters name there was Sam as well.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Mmm, this was awesome. I love the cover, for a start -- I love that everything about it announces that it's a pastiche/homage/[whatever word is right] of noir crime fiction like that of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The title makes that completely obvious (Dead Harvest = Red Harvest, if you didn't get that), as does the name of the main character (Sam as in Sam Spade, Thornton as in Raymond Chandler's middle name), and I think the style works too. I think a lot of that is lost on some readers, but for me it just added to the genius of the whole thing.There's never going to be anyone that can do Chandler as well as Chandler, but Sam makes a decent shop-worn Galahad on his own account. I'm intrigued by the world, and interested to see more of the angels -- the demons don't seem that unusual, apart from Veloch, but the angels... I'm thinking of Supernatural, and Good Omens. After all, "angels aren't always the good guys" is a plot both SPN and Good Omens have done, and "trying to kickstart the apocalypse" is Good Omens, and then the involvement of Lilith and...Anyway, I'm interested to see how it develops. It took me a while to get into the swing of how much gore there'd be, but I found it pretty compulsive reading. I'm really glad I've got The Wrong Goodbye around to read, and an ARC of The Big Reap. Gotta love Angry Robot -- this is definitely a winning series for me. Tremendous fun.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Stop me if you've heard this one. Boy meets girl. Boy tries to collect girl's soul for the Devil. Boy can't collect girl's soul because girl is blindingly pure (and a hottie). Boy chucks his assignment and steals girl away to try to protect her from all the Hell (and Heaven) that's about to break loose.

    Yeah, I didn't think so. And I haven't even gotten to the really novel pleasures this book has to offer. Like the slapstick horror potential of a reanimated cadaver trying to escape Bellvue hospital with an unconscious teenager who all but made the Most Wanted list before blacking out. Like pieces of an ubiquitous lucky money cat being wielded as a powerful supernatural weapon. Like a hero who can possess any body he chooses but tends to choose newly dead ones because fighting off the soul of a living body is a huge hassle.

    Some of these elements are used to better effect than others, but even if underexploited, they come together into a seamlessly enjoyable whole due to a strong crime noir-flavored plot and a weirdly engaging hero, our man Sam, who was originally an unemployed nebbish on Staten Island in 1944 but who made the wrong deal with the wrong people. His past, alluded to in carefully placed vignettes throughout the story, strongly colors his reactions to his present, as is strikingly reflected in the book's amazing cover art (take a moment now to bask in the perfection of yet another amazing Angry Robot Books cover design. The book looks just like a mass market paperback did back in Sam's original day, when mass market paperbacks were the new and terrible Thing That Was Going To Destroy Publishing. It's brilliant!), as his mission brings him back to his old original haunts over 60 years since he himself was Collected.

    The plot itself is interesting enough, but what I really found fascinating was the way Holm depicts Sam's experiences. A first person narrator, Sam loads his account of himself with sensations as experienced through his varied host bodies, relying on the superb physical fitness and muscle memory of one, on the suave good looks and body language of another. It makes the storytelling quite visceral and alive. I go back and forth on one niggling point, though: how often Sam should have been allowed to get away with calling it his own heartbeat, pulse, breath, blush response, versus calling it that of his host body. Sometimes he does one, sometimes another, and I'm not sure if this is meant to be taken as a way of tracking how deeply he is immersed in the experiences of a body, or if it's just something the narrator-writer slips to out of habit and narrative convention. This distracted me sometimes and yanked me out of that happy reading trance you guys know I like, but at least this time I was being yanked out by something interesting rather than a lot of verbal tics and typos (though I think Sam released a breath he didn't know he was holding a few too many times; ditto with setting fire to a cigarette instead of smoking one...).

    At any rate, it was infinitely preferable than, say, Stephen King's version of possession as depicted quite a lot in The Drawing of the Three, in which a host body is pretty much just treated as a robot-cum-walking database after a token brief struggle.

    And but so, here's the thing. I was not originally prepared to like this book very much, because it's pretty obvious from the early blurbs that Sam's decision to run away with the girl is likely to trigger all out war between Heaven and Hell, which really hasn't ever been my thing. For example, I only went to see that damned movie Legion because I love Paul Bettany, and boy was that a waste of my ticket money and his talent. Dogma is my least favorite Kevin Smith film. Et cetera. Plus I couldn't figure out the relationship of that neato vintage cover to what was pretty obviously a modern urban fantasy. So yeah, I fully intended to read it at some point, because Angry Robot has yet to truly let me down, but it never, you know, leaped out at me and said Read Me, Read Me Now... until my friend EssJay (yes, I know, we're like brainlocked or something. Hush) got her hands on it and devoured it and flagged down Angry Robot for an advance review copy of its sequel, The Wrong Goodbye, and gushed about that even more. And finally Dead Harvest started doing the Read Me Now Hula.

    I'm very glad it did. It's a perfect example of what Angry Robot seems to be better than anybody at finding: a genre fusion that will please fans of any/all of the genres it's mashing up. There's a nice heroic protection/rescue plot (though sometimes it's a real question of who is rescuing/protecting whom; the young girl, Kate, is plenty resourceful and feisty all on her own), with plenty of exciting action scenes*; there are plenty of crime/noir elements; there is the much-mentioned War Between Heaven and Hell. There are shades of what I still consider Piers Anthony's finest book, On a Pale Horse -- but only of the good elements thereof.

    It could all have gotten very, very corny, but it didn't. Though sometimes it came close:

    "He was a mountain of a cop, with dark deep-set eyes peering outward from a fleshy face, the features of which were twisted into an angry frown around a mustache the size of a small woodland creature. His barrel chest strained the button of his uniform blues as he approached, nightstick in hand... When he gave my bum leg a good thwack, I made my move. And by made my move, I mean fell down."

    Hee hee. So you can kind of see this is also often a very funny book. But not long after one laughs, one cringes. Sam is as attuned to the moral crises as the physical sensations he and his fellows experience while possessing unwilling "vessels", and Holm makes sure that we feel them, too. Yikes.

    At bottom, Dead Harvest is a perfectly fine whodunnit in the classic mode. It's just the howdunnit and whydunnit that are so very, very strange. And I like that.

    I'm looking forward to the sequel.

    *Especially an OMG sequence on board a hijacked helicopter, which, OMG.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fantastic first book in a new series, with an edgy supernatural premise. I'm on the verge of getting sick of the urban fantasy/supernatural genre, if only because it's become so dominant in the past few years, but I think it's more likely that I'm just going to end up being very selective about my reading habits, and this series makes the cut.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a fun and engaging book that was easy to get into and easy to finish. If you ever enjoyed On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony or Mort by Terry Pratchett then this will be right up your alley. It's got a light noir feel to it, but it remains thoroughly modern. And Holm does a good job of keeping you just uncertain enough about the truth behind the central dilemma that you remain on the side of Sam and share in his doubts. The mythology that Holm has created out of the christian stories feels familiar and yet all his own. There was perhaps one scene that I felt was too over the top and ridiculous, but beyond that the book does a good job of skirting that line. I know that Holm has said that he hates the term "cinematic" to describe his work, but I kept coming back to that one in my reading and my thoughts. The writing style, bouncing back and forth from origin story to current story, feels very influenced by TV and film, especially during the climax. However, due to the particulars of the main character it would be difficult to pitch this book as a movie. My understanding is that this was done on purpose, and I really respect that. But that does not detract from the "well-edited film" feel of the writing. I will definitely be reading the sequels.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sam is a collector. A collector of souls! You see, Sam's wife had contracted a strain of TB and in a moment of desperation, Sam accepted a sketchy employment opportunity from a gentleman named Dumas. While Dumas promised a complete recovery on the part of Sam's wife, he remained closed mouth on the true nature of his employment. Unfortunately for many, deals of this nature are extremely short sighted and if Sam possessed the foresight to know what his future would entail, he may have taken a little more time to come to his decision.

    Dead Harvest is what you get when you fill a casserole dish with equal parts detective noir, supernatural sci-fi, cover it with some snappy dialogue, pop it in the oven and broil the shit out of it. What you get is a recipe that will not only satisfy your palate but leave you hungry for more.

    I feel like Chris Holm had some excellent ideas here and you can tell he was influenced by some similar work that came before him (Hellblazer comics, Supernatural TV series, ). While I enjoyed the first installment in what looks to be a lengthy series, I'm more so excited of what's to potentially come. I'd like to think Holm can take what he's established here and build upon it, giving us a more complete picture of this world he's created. It's not too often that I walk away from a debut novel with such anticipation for future books.

    A lot of the supporting players came of a little bland at times, at least in comparison to Sam and Kate. That being said, there were times when Kate seemed like your average girl-in-peril. However, Holm lets her grow along with the story giving her a few chances to shock the reader.

    I'm really digging Angry Robot so far. This is the second book I've devoured that they've published and if this is par for the course for what they're releasing, I may have stumbled upon a cornucopia of entertainment. They certainly have some smart people over there - stay golden, pony boy.

    *Oh, and there's a nod to Lawrence Block.
    A few rooms in, a uniformed cop sat slouched beside an open door, his nose buried in a Scudder novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An interesting mash-up of the TV series 'Reaper,' the comic book 'Hellblazer,' and noir fiction. A few moments of brilliance but dragged down by flashbacks, too many set pieces, and one too many twists. Bonus points for a great cover design that mimics Penguins of old, as well as a title that plays on a noir classic. (I didn't pick up on it at first, until I saw the title of the second book in the series.)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Gritty, pulpy demon noir. I love it. (I was afraid it was going to turn out to be one of those Epics that doesn't need a sequel but is getting one anyway, but actually, I'm looking forward to the next one.)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    You know those kitschy Chinese lucky cats? Yeah, well, next time you're dining at a local Chinese restaurant, you might want to pick up one, or two, or three to have on hand for when shit gets real. This is the most important lesson I learned from Dead Harvest, but you'll have to read the book to find out why.Sam has been merrily plucking the souls of the living for decades now, with no remorse. As a Death Collector, remorse really isn't an issue. Souls need to be harvested when their hosts are ready to shuffle off this mortal coil. It's all part of the complex system that keeps everything in balance between The Maker and The Adversary, as well as the host of angels and demons that do their bidding. And, all things considered, both the holy and the damned are happy with the arrangement and don't want to do anything to tip the balance in such a way that will usher in the apocalypse.That's why Sam hesitates on his newest assignment. When he is sent to collect the soul of Kate, a teenager guilty of torturing and murdering her entire family, Sam is shocked to discover that, as he closes his fingers around her soul, it is pure, innocent, blameless--and if there's one thing guaranteed to piss off those up on high, it is the reaping of an innocent soul by the damned. The evidence against Kate is irrefutable, but so is the spanking white condition of her soul. Until Sam can figure out the paradox, he kidnaps Kate, bringing all the forces of Heaven and Hell to bear on him.Another reviewer compared this to one long chase scene, which is apt. The action begins on page 1 and never lets up. But it's a clever chase scene, full of quirky (if sometimes underdeveloped) characters, a fun mythology, and sharp dialogue. It's Good Omens meets Elmore Leonard. As a Death Collector, the character of Sam is a likable anti-hero, wanting to do the right thing yet managing to make a fuster-cluck out of everything. His inability to live outside of a human body (living or dead) is a twist that created several unique problems for an essentially immortal (though certainly not all-powerful) being, and it provides interesting narrative possibilities for future books. He prefers the bodies of the recently deceased ("meat suits") because he's not hindered by the internal monologue and pesky thoughts of sharing a body with a living host. Also, if a living host is killed while he's in the body, his soul is jettisoned out and into another body, which could be nearby or on the other side of the world. Because Sam still has a conscious, he doesn't want to destroy any living vessel he's "borrowed," but circumstances don't always make his choices so easy and his aversion to danger possible.I can't wait to get my hands on the second book (which features Sam on the cover, looking a lot like John Constantine--or is that just my imagination?).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Chris F. Holm’s first novel, Dead Harvest, is supernatural noir at its best. Sam Thornton, who is as surely named for Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade as he is for the Hebrew judge of the Bible, is the best sort of hero to serve as the basis for a series (THE COLLECTOR): despite being damned, he still has a strong sense of right and wrong, and refuses to do wrong whenever he has the option. The novel is based on one occasion when Sam has that option. His job is to collect damned souls to speed them on their way to their eternal punishment. His boss, Lilith (whom he always calls “Lily,” which she hates), has assigned him to collect the soul of Kate MacNeil, who has just killed her entire family. There is no doubt about this, because she tortured her mother until the police showed up, when she ended it by slitting her mother’s throat in their full view. But when Sam reaches into her chest to collect her soul, he is nearly blinded by the bright white light of her innocence — and more, he learns that something took possession of her body to commit those murders. Sam doesn’t know how this could have happened, but he does know that if an innocent soul is damned to hell for all eternity, it will set off a battle between angels and demons that will destroy the world. He kidnaps Kate from the hospital in hopes of giving himself time to figure out what to do. That is adventure enough, but things get much messier very fast. First, Sam’s superiors in the realms of hell (hell being situated here on earth, as well as everywhere else; it’s a condition, not a place per se) try to convince him to complete his task. Next, an angel — one of the seraphim, no less — attempts the same bit of persuasion. But when all manner of persuasion fails, things start to get ugly very quickly, and they get uglier by the second. Sam is one of those guys who doesn’t give up, no matter what. Send angels and demons after him; bash him with a car; stab him with a knife; he still won’t go down. In the midst of a whirlwind of action, Sam is also trying to figure out why anyone would want him to collect a soul that doesn’t warrant damnation, a thorny problem causing Sam — and the reader — to consider the questions of free will and eternity. Dead Harvest will make you stretch your lunch hours and stay up far later than is good for you, as the action propels the book along at a good clip. And the heavier philosophical and theological questions posed will keep you thinking about Sam and his universe long after you’ve turned the last page. I’m already looking forward to the next book in the series, The Wrong Goodbye, which is scheduled for publication in September. One more note: I thought I was completely over the “distressed” cover motif, but this cover, apparently the brainchild of Marc Gascoigne at Angry Robot and executed by a group called Amazing 15, is really a lovely example of the genre. It looks like a beat-up old paperback of 1940s vintage. Very nicely done.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well written with an interesting premise--a being which collects souls of the evil newly dead to deliver them to the afterlife is ordered to collect the soul of a known murderer. However, when "he" goes to collect the soul of this girl, he finds her soul is bright and shiny, and knows there is something amiss. So instead of letting the girl die and taking her to hell, he keeps her alive and begins to try and solve the mystery. It was getting interesting until demonic possession came into the mix, which I'm totally not interested in. So I didn't finish the book. But if you like demons and the like, this would be a great read.