“Hestizo Trace would die screaming. And he would live forever.”
Taking place in 3645 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin), Red Harvest is a unique zombie horror novel in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. This book explains the origins of a mysterious contagion that later appears in Joe Schreiber’s future novel in the timeline, Death Troopers (which I have yet to read). It’s fair to say Red Harvest is one of the most violent, gory, grotesque Star Wars novels I have yet encountered –and it’s a great read. This stand-alone novel harrowingly drags readers into the depths of a remote, dark, windswept, snowy planet where unnatural Sith experiments are being conducted.
Red Harvest is set on the harsh, frigid planet of Odacer-Faustin where a Sith Academy is located amidst the ruins of an ancient temple (Odacer-Faustin was apparently based on a combination of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back and the snowy terrain as featured in The Shining). We meet a cohort of Sith acolytes undergoing lightsaber duel training like Wim Nickter, Scopique (a Zabrak), Kindra, Jura Ostrogoth, Mnah Ra’at (a small but fierce and determined trainee), Mannock T’sank, Sith Combat Master Xat Hracken, Rance Lussk (known for being the top student), and Lord Shak’Weth, the Sith Blademaster. There are other interesting characters, especially a tree-like Neti who is the Academy librarian. He is named Dail’Liss (his name means “lover of knowledge” on his home planet). We also meet an HK assassin droid (reprogrammed to be a protocol droid), and, of course, the fearsome leader of the Sith Academy named Darth Scabrous who is conducting secret experiments in the ancient temple located deep beneath the Academy.
The novel begins as a bounty hunter named Dranok and his Nalvaanian partner make a delivery to the Sith Academy on Odacer-Faustin, they bring a package containing a rare flower, but Darth Scabrous is angry when he discovers they have not delivered the correct flower. Darth Scabrous kills both the bounty hunters and hires a different bounty hunter to track down the flower. Meanwhile, Scabrous starts abducting students from his own Academy, like Win Nickter, who loses a duel to Rance Lussk only to find himself imprisoned in a cage high above the Academy tower surrounded by strange pumps and a mysterious concoction of dead flowers being pumped into his body.
Next, we meet a twenty-five-year-old Jedi padawan named Hestizo “Zo” Trace who is working in the Agricultural Corps on the flora-rich planet of Marfa. Zo is known to have a “psychic green thumb” and she operates out of the Marfa hothouse facility where she nurtures every form of botanical life using the Force. In particular, she established a unique Force-connection with a rare Orchid known as the “Murakami Orchid” (they communicate back-and-forth throughout the novel). However, both she and the flower are abducted by a tusked Whiphid bounty hunter named Tulkh (he kidnaps them both since the Murakami Orchid cannot be separated from its Jedi counterpart). He takes them aboard his ship the “Mirocaw” and delivers them to Darth Scabrous on Odacer-Faustin.
We learn that Darth Scabrous intends to use the Murakami Orchid and the Jedi blood-sacrifice of Zo to unleash an unnatural Sith experiment he learned about via a Sith holocron created by an ancient Sith Lord named Darth Drear who was obsessed with “staving off death” (not unlike other Sith Lords throughout history, like Darth Plagueis). However, the infection quickly goes awry as, one-by-one, the Sith acolytes all fall prey to the zombie infestation, roaming around the ruins of the Academy with fleshy skin hanging off their bones and screaming high shrill noises to attract more of their kind. It leads to a terrifying set of scenes, from the darkened halls of the library, to a section of the Academy known as the Pain Pipe, as unsuspecting characters are surprised and attacked by their former compatriots who are now zombies.
Zo manages to escape from Darth Scabrous –her one saving grace is that she manages to maintain her psychic Force-connection with the dissolved Murakami Orchid (now present in all the zombies) and she is able to instruct it to “grow” which effectively stops the encroaching creatures in their tracks as plant-like vines suddenly sprout out of their limbs and orifices. However, the “grow” injunction also painfully exhausts the orchid and she disappears for a time. While hiding in the bowels of the Academy, Zo reunites with the bounty hunter Tulkh (who is armed with a spear and bow-and-arrow), as well as the Academy’s HK droid and a hangar technician named Pergus Frode. They battle waves of undead zombies, and even infected Tauntauns, before Zo’s brother Rojo suddenly arrives on Odacer-Faustin to rescue her. While on Geonosis, he receives a Force vision of his sister in trouble. He then traces her kidnapping from Marfa using a recording of Thulian vapor cloud formation on the side of Tulkh’s ship. This leads to Kwenn space station, a dreary post-industrial outpost in Hutt space, where a drunken Bothan smuggler named Gree explains to Rojo that his sister has been taken to Odacer-Faustin. Once he arrives, Rojo realizes something is very wrong on this planet and he eventually faces off with a now-infected Darth Scabrous only to be killed himself (Rojo is nearly sliced in half). And in the end, it is left to Zo to defeat Darth Scabrous and avenge her brother. She only narrowly defeats him by telepathically reconnecting with the Murakami Orchid and instructing her to “grow” again, thereby stopping the zombified Scabrous.
Zo then flees from the hordes of zombies and boards the Mirocaw helmed by Tulkh to escape the planet (after the HK droid re-arranges the Academy’s auto-turrets so they destroy the tower and all the zombies inside, instead of the escaping Mirocaw). However, in one final twist a la Alien (or any number of other science fiction horror books and movies), Tulkh has been infected by one of the zombie Tauntauns. While they come up with a plan to end his life before the infection takes hold, they are horrified to find that one of the Sith acolyte zombies has secretly boarded their ship (it is zombie-Lussk). Miraculously, Zo manages to enclose them both inside the airlock and launch them out into open space, finally ridding herself of the contagion forever… or has she? She decides to head back to Marfa where she will connect with a new Murakami Orchid, and then she plans to head onward to Coruscant for her Jedi studies.
Final Thoughts:
There are a great many notably literary references in this novel: for example, one chapter directly references Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (“It was a pleasure to burn”), another chapter is called Redwall, and the character of Rojo Trace is based on Liam Neeson’s character from the film Taken, and apparently a first draft of the novel contained a character named Middish Sunblade, who was modeled on Holden Caulfield. Not to mention the title of “Red Harvest” likely being a reference to the Dashiell Hammet novel of the same name (and also a nod to George Lucas’s original working title for Star Wars, “Blue Harvest”). Plus, there are the usual Star Wars in-jokes (I tracked at least one “I’ve got a bad feeling about this”). There are plenty of appropriately disturbing scenes in this novel and the top character for me is likely the spear-wielding Whiphid bounty hunter Tulkh. And while I thought the sibling relationship between Zo and Rojo was underdeveloped and even felt a bit contrived, and overall the novel lacks character development (since many of the characters are quickly killed off) and it raises all manner of in-universe questions (like why can’t a group of Sith acolytes and a Jedi padawan harness the Force to put down a zombie pathogen?) but Red Harvest is still a uniquely engaging stand-alone Star Wars novel in my view.
Assorted Notes:
- Durasteel blades are used for Sith training.
- Nalvaanian – a race of blue-furred lupine humanoids native to the planet Nelvaan. They are known to be elite trackers, and they primarily appear in the comics and novels. In this novel, there is a Nalvaanian bounty hunter who is killed.
- Marfa – the plant-rich Core World where Zo works.
- In this novel it is mentioned that the Sith acolyte Jura Ostrogoth grew up on Chazwa in the Orus sector.
- Mubasa hock (a Hutt dish) and canned montra fruit (a side dish to Mubasa Hock) are served in the dining hall of the Sith Academy.
- The Kuat Drive Yards are mentioned.
- Whiphid – tusked creatures from the planet Toola. In this novel, the bounty hunter Tulkh is a Whiphid.
- Geonosis appears briefly in this novel (it is where Rojo begins the story). It is depicted as an ancient craggy world before the Geonosians moved underground, and suffered mass extinctions and catastrophes. There is reference to a rogue comet strike on its largest moon that nearly wiped out the whole population on Geonosis.
- Mustafar lava fleas are referenced as are Boski scarab beetles, Unakki eye spiders, and Cosm-wasps.
- The Kwenn space station is described as a dreary post-industrial outpost in Hutt space.
- In a nod to The Phantom Menace, Midi-chlorians are referenced!
- Red Harvest was originally titled “Black Orchid” but according to Lucas Licensing executive editor Sue Rostoni, the title of the book was changed because “Black Orchid” sounded too much like a romance novel.
Schreiber, Joe. Red Harvest. Del Rey. New York, New York, 2010.