Season of the Harvest - Michael R. Hicks

   2012; 372 pages.  Book One (out of three) in the “Harvest” trilogy.  New Author? : No, but it’s been a while.  Genres : Techno-thriller, Action-Intrigue.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    FBI Special Agent Sheldon Crane is about to die.  He’s trapped in a dead-end corner of a dark underground tunnel, and that which is chasing him is but a couple minutes away.  Poison is already shooting through his body, and may well finish him off before his pursuer arrives.

 

    His fate is sealed and he accepts that.  But there’s still a small amount of precious time to do something that might make his death worthwhile.

 

    Crane is carrying a Glock 22 , the standard weapon issued to FBI agents.  It won’t do him any good against the thing that’s stalking him, but he still has a couple ammunition magazines for it.  He carefully empties one of them and pulls a small plastic bag from his pocket containing a handful of ordinary-looking corn kernels.  But these are very valuable seeds, and worth more than his life.

 

    He selects four of the kernels and gingerly inserts them into one of the magazines, places a single bullet over them, and slams the magazine into the Glock.  He then reseals the bag holding the remaining kernels, and swallows it.  He's certain his pursuer will dismember his corpse in search of the stolen corn, but perhaps when it discovers the baggie, it’ll be content with recovering that and won’t bother inspecting the Glock.

 

    Well, his executioner has just rounded a corner and spotted him.  It’s time for Special Agent Sheldon Crane to die.

 

What’s To Like...

    Season of the Harvest is an action-intrigue-technothriller-adventure set against a backdrop issue of “what's the matter with GMOs?”.  GMO is an acronym for “Genetically Modified Organisms”, a hot-button topic in agribusiness right now, but don’t be misled, the thrills-&-spills take precedence here, not the speculative science.

 

    The baddies, nicknamed “harvesters”, are formidable foes: imagine an “Alien/Predator” hybrid that can also do shapeshifting.  Our protagonist, FBI Special Agent Jack Dawson, has two main tasks: a.) figure out who killed his Agent Crane (and why); and b.) figure out what’s so important about a couple kernels of corn.

 

    I thought Michael R. Hicks did a thorough job of researching the storyline.  The reader gets to some snippets in both Russian and Norwegian, two languages that rarely make it into novels.  The GMO/non-GMO issue was presented evenly, a necessity when dealing with such a controversial topic.  The weaponry details, including the “willie petes” and “bouncing bettys”,  also seemed accurate, although I’m a poor judge of that.

 

    Being a chemist, I loved that chromatograms got a brief mention, and I was amused by the “law of unintended consequences”.  There are plenty of acronyms, my favorite being “BUFF” (Big Ugly Fat F**ker).  A lot of the story takes place in the confines of an old missile silo complex, which reminded me of Hugh Howey’s epic, Sand.

 

    The book is divided into 35 chapters, plus a prologue and epilogue, covering 372 pages.  Chapter 24 introduces a scenario that is chillingly similar to our current Covid crisis, which is spooky, given that this book was published in 2012.  The extras in the back include a brief promo for the sequel ("Bitter Harvest") and an Afterword from the author, which we’ll discuss in a bit.

 

    The ending is exciting, twisty, with lots of action and a fascinating glimpse into how our government might spin a doomsday story around to keep us ordinary citizens comforted, content, and completely clueless.  The epilogue is excellent, being a kind of “what happened to…” for some of the main characters.  Parts of the ending left a lump in my throat, and even though there’s a “hook” that sets up the book’s sequel, this is a standalone novel.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Waldo (n.) : a remote manipulator, as for puppets, operated either mechanically or electronically.

Others: Prang (v., British); Flechette (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.2/5 based on 1,348 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.63/5 based on 4,402 ratings and 361 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “We call them harvesters,” she began.  “We don’t know what they’re really called, or if they even have a name for themselves that we could comprehend, so we had to come up with something.  Gregg coined the term, and it stuck.”

    “Haven’t they…” Jack began, suppressing his revulsion at the thing’s natural appearance, “…haven’t they ever said anything about who they are or where they come from?”

    “Nothing we were willing to believe,” she said.  (loc. 2327)

 

    “What are we going to do about this?”

    “We’ve already got an assault team ready to go in,” Ridley told him.  “All they need is your go-ahead.”

    “A team?” Curtis said angrily.  “A team?  I want bloody overwhelming, irresistible force!”

    “A hundred and fifty heavily armed FBI agents is ‘bloody overwhelming irresistible force,’ Mr. President,” she replied evenly.  (loc. 5307)

 

Kindle Details…

    ANAICT, Season of the Harvest is always free at Amazon.  The other two books in the series go for $4.95 apiece.  In addition, Michael R. Hicks has a nine-book Science Fiction – First Contact series titled In Her Name, with two of its books for free and the other seven for $4.95 apiece..

 

“Conquest is expensive; extermination isn’t.”  (loc. 1930 )

    There are a few quibbles  You can tell pretty quickly who the baddies and who the goodies are.  A couple black-hats eventually “turn”, which is a plus, but you can generally tell their friend-or-foe status from if they don’t like Jack or Jack doesn't like them. Also, if they’re not given a name when introduced, their life expectancy is probably very short.  And if any doubts remain, turn them over to the cats.  

 

    There’s a lot of cussing in the book: I counted 26 instances in the first 10% of the book, and it didn’t seem to let up after that.  The editing is excellent, except for one glaring glitch: the paragraphs aren’t justified.  However, I suspect this was a function of converting the word-processor version into the Kindle-format.

 

    Some of the naysayers at Amazon and Goodreads had negative didn't like the “aliens” plot twist, but I thought it was clearly hinted at early on and worked nicely.  Others seemed perturbed by the anti-GMO slant, but so what?  It makes for an exciting storyline.

 

    The quibbles didn't stop me from enjoying Season of the Harvest. I found it to be an easy and engaging read.  I can’t say that the writing “pulled me in”, but neither was it a slog.  Michael R. Hicks does all the right literary things to keep the action flowing and the reader entertained.

 

    7 Stars.  Michael R. Hicks has strong and passionate feelings against GMOs being so prevalent in our present-day food chain.  Happily, instead of bogging down the storyline with long-winded preaching, he chooses to lay out his case in the Afterword.  I happen to disagree with his views, but I enjoyed reading his persuasive presentation of them.