The Harvesting

by Melanie Karsak

[Berls]

This review appeared first at Fantasy is More Fun.

3.5 stars

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

To be fair to The Harvesting, I read the majority of it when I was in an extreme reading funk - and it was the first audio book in a string of audio books that I didn't quit. So maybe that alone should earn it more than 3.5 stars - but it still didn't have that special something that made me love it.

I think that my problem - the thing that kept it from being great - was that everything came a bit too easy or was a bit too convenient. It's the Zombie Apocalypse and this town is dealing with it way too well in my opinion. I mean they did lose a lot of people, but it never felt truly catastrophic.

And the main character just so happens to be a medieval warfare and sword fighting expert who speaks Russian dialects fluently. How handy! I think I just like to see things not be so simple.

Despite those negative points, the story is a good one. I liked the way zombies worked in this world and the way the author blended multiple mythologies. Definitely some good world building that kept me curious and - because of how it ended - left me with questions for book 2.

The narration was pretty good as well - I ended up listening at 1.5x-2x speed, which isn't great for most narrators performance. But Kristin James held up under the high speed pressure. I still heard good accents and, for the most part, good variation in voices. There were a few points where characters lost their distinctive voices and blended into each other, but not enough to bother me. I would continue listening if/when I read book 2 in the series.