Red Harvest: Star Wars Legends

By Joe Schreiber

The era of the Old Republic is a dark and dangerous time, as Jedi Knights valiantly battle the Sith Lords and their ruthless armies. But the Sith have disturbing plans—and none more so than the fulfillment of Darth Scabrous’s fanatical dream, which is about to become nightmarish reality.

Unlike those other Jedi sidelined to the Agricultural Corps—young Jedi whose abilities have not proved up to snuff—Hestizo Trace possesses one extraordinary Force talent: a gift with plants. Suddenly her quiet existence among greenhouse and garden specimens is violently destroyed by the arrival of an emissary from Darth Scabrous. For the rare black orchid that she has nurtured and bonded with is the final ingredient in an ancient Sith formula that promises to grant Darth Scabrous his greatest desire.

But at the heart of the formula is a never-before-seen virus that’s worse than fatal—it doesn’t just kill, it transforms. Now the rotting, ravenous dead are rising, driven by a bloodthirsty hunger for all things living—and commanded by a Sith Master with an insatiable lust for power and the ultimate prize: immortality . . . no matter the cost.

Features a bonus section following the novel that includes a primer on the Star Wars expanded universe, and over half a dozen excerpts from some of the most popular Star Wars books of the last thirty years!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307796035

Joe Schreiber

JOE SCHREIBER is the New York Times bestselling author of adult novels Death Troopers, Chasing the Dead, and Eat the Dark. His other novels for young people include, the critically acclaimed Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, Perry's Killer Playlist, and Lenny Cyrus, School Virus. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and children.

Reviews for Red Harvest

[deborahj2016 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm torn in my rating. On one hand, it is good to read a tale of one of the AgriCorp Jedi who is not as useless as some might think. On the other hand, having another Jedi use Liam Neeson's speech from _Taken_ (the "special set of skills" speech) jolted me right out of the carefully crafted world and it took a while for me to get back into it again. High marks for genre mash-up, points deducted for being thefty with the speech.

[jrashk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Zombie (Rakghoul) Apocalypse meets a Sith academy in the star wars universe. A must read for fans of star wars and zombie movies.

[slimy07 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fun horror story set in the Star Wars universe.

[ennuiprayer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A long time ago in a blog post way, way in the past...

I read a novel that combined two things I hold true in my heart, zombies and Star Wars - the real Star Wars, not those prequel abortions (with the slight exception of Revenge of the Sith as I have a soft spot for bad guys winning). I discovered the novel in the most absurd way - I discovered it on 4Chan. Before Star Wars: Death Troopers, I never heard of Joe Schreiber. To be honest, I never did much venturing to read some of his none Star Wars books. I'm thinking about it now, though.

Darth Scabrous, the Sith Lord, discovered a lost plan from a predecessor. A elixir for immortality. All he needs is the Murakami orchid, an orchid so rare that it can only be found in one location - the Jedi Agricultural Corps. In order for the orchid to remain alive, it must be accompanied by a Jedi with plant growth skills. When a bounty hunter kidnaps Hestizo Trace and her orchid charge, her brother, Rojo, finds himself on a rescue mission on Odacer-Faustin, home to a Sith academy.

It's easy to overlook all the major players of this novel when cutting it down to a summary. The fact alone that it opens at the Sith academy leads the reader to believe that every character plays some important role - and they do, sorta. Maybe. They carry their own plot line, if that means anything to you.

What keeps me from loving this novel is Schreiber's insistence on killing every single character that I loved. Even though I know it's rare for a Jedi and Sith to work with each other, it's still bothering that none of them ever, well, meet.

[jmourgos · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Red Harvest was a fascinating book in a lot of ways with strange aliens, a brother & sister Jedi team and a Sith master who wanted nothing more than eternal life -- but it came at a price.

Red Harvest comes after "Death Troopers" by Joe Schreiber, but it feel Red Harvest is the superior of the two.

Darth Scabrous runs the Sith Academy on some dirty planet. Apparently the Sith guys have academies to train their students just like the Jedi Academy does on Courascant. (Yes, I'm relatively new to the Star Wars novels).

He discovers a method of using a rare orchid that has a lot of Force in it and mixing it with a nearly dead person, killing the victim, a virulent "Sickness" appears. It can make bodily functions continue long after death and can transmit the Sickness to others by biting them. There is no cure.

Several interesting points in the novel. The Sickness can infect other species. To see zombie tauntauns was fun as well as zombie living tree aliens. The zombies (they're not called that) walk across the landscape of the planet looking for more to infect. One bite and you're as good as dead.

The brother & sister team was interesting but not played up very much with the brother. He is Trace and she is Zo. He is an accomplished Jedi Knight and she is Jedi too but has a natural affinity towards plant life. She is kidnapped and trapped by Scabrous, since she needs to be near the orchid for it to get the full benefit of the Force. Scabrous wants to eat her heart out. Yuk!

The brother on the other hand goes looking for her and this part of the story fails a bit. It's a little too easy how he hunts her down, finds her and then things don't turn out too well for him!

Really enjoyed the descriptions of the dark Sith planet and the goal of the Sickness, to eventually invade and destroy the galaxy. Much better read than Death Troopers and leaves you wondering at the end if that is the end of the Sickness or did it escape somehow. Clearly room for a sequel.

[capiam1234 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Took awhile to warm up to this one. The mix of zombies and Star Wars seems more just a marketing ploy and seems to cheapen the universe with the lack of imagination for better story lines.

[wuher · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A new plague virus is introduced, and turning force sensitive beings into flesh eating monsters. In the time of the Old Republic, the Jedi are as the guardians of peace, but how can the Jedi restore peace in a time of crisis caused by those that were once Jedi themselves? The chills and gore are continued through another horror adventure this time set during the times of the Old Republic. Joe Schreiber, author of Star Wars: Death Troopers, returns with another horror novel with Del Rey: Star Wars: Red Harvest. This novel will have any reader reading on end as it is filled with surprises, gore, mystery, and horror. -Wuher MosEisley

[m_k_m_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm more and more convinced that what kept me hooked on Star Wars as a kid was the internal coherence of its universe. Yeah, the laser guns and big bangs and whizzy spaceships were massively exciting, but Battle Beyond the Stars had them and even as an eight-year-old I knew that was pap. But watching Luke and Vader duel their way through Cloud City , I believed every computer bank, vent and chasm had some purpose. In my mind, those corridor didn't lead to the edge of the set, they just kept going. Every one of those aliens crowded into the Mos Eisley cantina had some reason to be there. When I've returned to the franchise as an adult (I tend to get a rush of nostalgia every couple of years or so), it's been to explore the more distant corners of that galaxy far, far away.Joe Schreiber's Blackwing novels are the perfect example of that. By throwing the series' elements into the horror blender, they gain a voice that goes beyond merely pastiching Lucas's films. It helps that Schreiber's prose has an eloquence that goes beyond that often expected of tie-in material, and he manages to make those elements that should be horrifying genuinely squirm-worthy. Red Harvest might not have the same impact as Death Troopers, but that's chiefly because it lacks the familiar elements of the earlier books: the vast, clinical spaces of Star Destroyers make a much less caring (and therefore more disquieting) environment for horror than the more consciously malevolent Sith Academy found here.As on so many of the recent Star Wars releases, the sound design on the audiobook version is most impressive. No kid who's ever pretended to be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo has done so without doing their best to recreate the dew-dews, whuums and zwooshes, and if a story doesn't blast in with that John Williams fanfare, it's not really Star Wars. Mixed in with the screams, splats and ominous rumbles of survival horror, that audio landscape ties Red Harvest into the mythos while offering a disquieting contrast. Only on occasion does the sound not quite match the prose: the whispered voices that echo the chapter titles can be unintentionally hilarious if the last word isn't that chilling ("Box! Box box box box..."). The litmus test for tie-in fiction is whether it stands up regardless of the license, and, on that basis, Schreiber's books work brilliantly. Red Harvest might not be as red-blooded as Death Troopers, but it's still a terrific action-horror adventure in its own right – and one of the most imaginative uses of the Star Wars license I've encountered. This dark corner of the galaxy has plenty of guts. And it's not afraid to show them to you.

[havok1891 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

There are some fun ideas and it was entertaining to read. But the story was way too short to be worthy of its own book. I still can't figure out if I read it so quickly because I enjoyed it or because it's overall word count is so low. I felt that sequences in the story were handled badly (timing issues). There are some blatant rip offs of things from other movies, and I don't mean Star Wars movies. There are also liberties taken with "The Force" and how it should work (jedi knights being able to telepathically communicate to non-force sensitive people that are planets away for example). You should like it, if you can get past all that.

[matnastos_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book wasn't bad, but it was very much done as a set up for "Death Troopers." There wasn't much point in the story, which was pretty weak. To me, it read like a horror story written by someone who had never actually read one and was just going down a list of "must have for every horror movie" they downloaded online. Not horrible, but a let down for sure.

[brainchild138 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This does a good job being a b-movie horror, with lots of violence, gore, and death. Unfortunately, it also has those b-movie continuity problems. A black sword is all of a sudden red. Person A is the first zombie, and bites person B, but later on someone talks about seeing B bite A. A flashback towards the end of the book explains something seen earlier, but things happen during that flashback that wouldn't have been possible at that time.