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An extraterrestrial has crashed into the Southern Appalachian Mountains near the Town of Windshake, North Carolina. The alien is a life form similar to the vegetation around him. As the being learns about his new location and starts to gain strength from the sun, he probes around trying to discover if the planet has any intelligent life on it. All the alien hears are strange sounds that he cannot understand and he uses the quiet dark of the night hours to try to make some sense of it. After a while he decides that his new home is without any kind of intelligent life, so he starts to take it over so that the rest of his species can come and claim the planet for their own. The population of Windshake starts to notice strange lights appearing in the mountains and the rain begins to have a green shimmer to it. Old-timer, moonshine lover, Chester Mull would like to investigate but he uses his arthritis as an excuse and doesnıt walk much further than his porch to where his jar of Don Oscarıs moonshine sits waiting for him. Tamara Leon just moved to Windshake with her husband and children and she also knows that something bad is going to happen. Since she was a small child, Tamara has been haunted by ³the gloomies,² her words for the sounds she hears and the dreams she has that predict the future. She foretold her fatherıs death, knew that her son was going to break his hip, and now the gloomies are giving her dreams about nature and death. She also hears strange words echoing in her head. Meanwhile, the residents of Windshake start to change. Don Oscar Moody was the first person to transform. When he touched some strange sap on his moonshine still, it killed him, but even dead, he suddenly realized that he wanted to belong to nature. Even though he was no longer a living man, he had the urge to share the good news of his new found desire with others. When his wife saw him walking towards the house, she observed that Don Oscar had changed -- a lot. His body looked like nature gone bad. He was turning into twigs and leaves and a milky sap was running out of his mouth. When Don kissed her, she too died and changed right along with him. Then they both wanted to share their new found love of nature with all their friends. THE HARVEST by Scott Nicholson starts off with a great premise. The characters he introduced were engaging and interesting. But the story soon starts to go downhill. There are multiple subplots that have little to do with the main story, and weıre told every little thing about every character and, all in all, the plot slowed down to a near crawl. The part of the tale that deals with the alien and how the town was being changed was fascinating. But when the author had a few of his characters quote pages and chapters and verse from the bible, just to show how religious they are, everything grinds to a dead halt. I wanted to skip over it just to get back to the main story. A good half of this book could have been edited out. There was far too much going on, far too many details, and far too many unnecessary bible references. The ending was a great let-down as well. I actually couldnıt stop rolling my eyes and groaning as I read the outcome. Even with all the disappointing aspects of THE HARVEST Iıd still recommend it to lovers of the horror genre. The best I can say is that this would have made a fine short story. But as a 383 page book, it falls short.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, November 2003
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