Red Harvest and Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber
Star Wars Zombies
Red Harvest Death Troopers
My Rating: 4/5 My Rating: 3/5
Zombie Rating*: 10/10 Zombie Rating*: 6/10
Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2010 Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2009
Legends/Canon: Legends Legends/Canon: Legends
Timeline: 3645 BBY Timeline: 1 BBY
Welcome back to the Star Wars Book Club and Happy Halloween 2022! We’re celebrating today with a combined review of Red Harvest and Death Troopers, both by Joe Schreiber. This review will be spoiler free, but zombies will abound!
I think it’s fair to say that I’m not well-versed in horror, but somewhere along the way I’ve consumed a strange amount of zombie-related content. The one important thing to note about said zombie content is that, across the board, they all have something that makes them unique. Whether that’s focusing on the lack of humanity of the survivors of the apocalypse, or innovating the classic lumbering zombie into a crazed speed demon, there always has to be something to set the story apart.
Enter Red Harvest. I debated long and hard over whether I could give a Star Wars zombie book a 5/5 rating. In the end, I settled on 4, but that’s subject to change because I enjoyed this book so much more than I ever expected to, and I don’t know how I feel about that. Let me explain.
We’re set on a far away planet where a large Sith Academy is based, and right off the bat you’ve piqued my interest. I’ve been curious lately to see more of the Sith in their prime, so seeing an entire academy of Sith students and Sith Masters teaching classes was a remarkably pleasant surprise. And, as it so happens, this makes for a wonderfully terrible zombie breeding ground.
Our zombies make their appearance quite quickly in this book, thanks to the work of Darth Scabrous, who creates a virus in order to gain immortality. I honestly loved that plot point. It felt exactly like something a Sith Lord would do, and the fact that he ends up kidnapping a Jedi named Zo who can speak with plants was the cherry on top of the whole thing for me.
Zo was our obligatory Jedi of the book, but she fit in nicely. I loved her plant powers, but mostly I loved her brother, Rojo Trace. He needed way more screen time, and I would absolutely read an entire book about him. The lack of screen time for him is more a testament to the short length of this book. It’s one of the shortest Star Wars books I’ve read, and combine that with the inherent intensity of a zombie book and you’ve got yourself a page-turning read that just flies by.
You know why it flies by? Because these Sith students turned zombies REFUSE TO DIE! They are fast. They are nearly unkillable. And boy, oh boy, they are gory! Like, read through my fingers, it’s so disgusting but I can’t look away, type gory.
Now I’m a little extra embarrassed by how much I enjoyed this one.
And that leads me into the second half of this review, where I will mercilessly tear apart Death Troopers because it just didn’t live up to Red Harvest. Just kidding, I won’t be merciless, but I was a little disappointed. Going into October, Death Troopers was the book I was most excited for, and it let me down.
It didn’t have the intensity I would have expected for a zombie book. I wasn’t as sold on the purpose of the virus that created these zombies. It felt like evil for evil’s sake, and I didn’t love it. It was way less gory, which is good for some people, but I was strangely disappointed. Is that something I should admit in a public review?
We didn’t have nearly as many up close and personal, zombie-in-your-face scenes. The setting was on an abandoned Star Destroyer, which is kind of ominous, but for me personally the Sith Academy was a more interesting setting.
My biggest grievance with Death Troopers was in the character department. We have two brothers who are criminals, one of whom I liked a lot more than the other. We have a Captain of the Guard who is the exact definition of a psychopath. We have a doctor who just wants to go home. And we have two other characters who I can’t speak about because this is spoiler free. But it’s those two characters that hurt this book for me. I don’t quite know why the decision was made to include them. I don’t think they added anything to the story that other characters couldn’t have, if that makes sense.
Anyway, maybe Death Troopers fell flat for me because I compared it directly to Red Harvest. Whatever happened there, my final recommendation is this: If you like gory Sith zombies then Red Harvest is a good choice. If you rather less gore and more smarts than Death Troopers is a good option.
Thanks for being here! I hope you enjoyed this Halloween themed Star Wars content.
Would you ever read either of these books?
*These ratings were really hard to decide on, and so I’ve made the executive decision to add a ‘zombies’ section to my Master Ranking Lists where these two books will live. It’s just too hard to compare these to the regular Star Wars books that I’ve been reading.
Isn't it nice when you find out that a book is better than you expected it to be?