Red Harvest (novel)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The prequel to Death Troopers, a Star Wars horror novel by Joe Schreiber. It serves as an origin story for The Virus that is the focus of both novels. The story takes place 3645 years before the events of the original trilogy. Hestizo Trace (“Zo” for short”) is in the Jedi Agricultural Corps due to her ability to form a force bond with certain plants. She is the caretaker of a rare black orchid. Unfortunately, this orchid is needed by Darth Scabrous, head of the Sith Academy on Odacer-Faustin, to complete his immortality formula. So Zo is kidnapped by a bounty hunter, who takes her to Scabrous. Scabrous then uses it to unintentionally unleash zombies on the academy, which begin to kill the students, turning them into zombies. The story then follows a Zo and the bounty hunter, as well as a group of Sith students as they attempt to escape before they become infected themselves. Meanwhile, Zo’s brother is coming to rescue his sister, completely unaware of the danger within the academy, and Scabrous is trying to capture the person he needs to finish the immortality process.

Tropes used in Red Harvest (novel) include:
  • Army of the Dead: Duh.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Pretty much the entire Sith Academy.
  • Darker and Edgier: Like the original novel.
  • Finish Him!: The surviving students kill those among them at risk of turning into a zombie.
  • Kill'Em All: Every one of the fifteen-plus characters we meet are killed, except for Zo and Pergus.
  • Mythology Gag: The title is not only a reference not only to the deadly agricultural themes. When Return of the Jedi was being shot, everything was produced under the facade of a fake horror movie called Blue Harvest to avoid attention (which was also used as the name of the Family Guy Star Wars parody).
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Trace dies to save his sister, and the HK droid destroys himself to let the heroes get away.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: Sort of an in-universe example, the virus in this novel is different from the one in Deathtroopers in several different ways.
    • Also justified in that the corpses are those of Force-users, allowing for faster zombies.
  • Raising the Steaks: In this case, a pack of Tauntauns.
  • Shout-Out:
    • When Trace makes a mental connection to the bounty hunter who took his sister, he makes a shoutout to Taken.

Listen to me, I don't know who you are, but I am in possession of a very special set of skills. If you bring my sister back right now, then I’ll let you go. But if you don't, I will track you down. I will find you. And I will make you pay.

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