Review: DARK HARVEST by Will Jordan, aka The Critical Drinker

That's all for today.

Pretty ballsy move for one of the Internet’s top film critics to put his own work out there, but this isn’t Will Jordan’s first rodeo. What’s more impressive is his willingness to have skin in the game, where others would butter their bread only with the criticisms of mainstream work. DARK HARVEST proves that he knows what he’s doing, and can throw curveballs when needed.

The Story

In the early days of the Cold War, a group of Russian hikers stumbles into a cave in the Ural Mountains, unknowingly stirring up an ancient virus that has been preserved in the cold. The entire group dies brutally in a matter of hours, some of whom endure gross physical trauma on their way to the afterlife. (It turns out this is based on an actual event called the Dyatlov Pass incident, which for my money REALLY ups the creepy factor.)

Sixty years later, in the present day, the virus appears again in the Middle East, this time as a bioweapon that briefly turns people into pseudo-zombies before they croak. It’s up to Definitely-Not-Jason-Bourne protagonist Cameron Becker to hunt it down and figure out who controls it, where it came from, and why it’s in play.

Along the way he uncovers a plot to unleash it on the world, obliterating the vast majority of humanity on purpose, proving that someone has spent WAY too much time on Twitter. (But seriously. This book is what would have happened if someone other than Dan Brown wrote INFERNO.)

The Characters

The aforementioned Becker. He has a familiar pedigree for this kind of story, a modern techno-thriller that doesn’t rely on any speculative elements to carry the worldbuilding.

Opposite Becker is Lori Dalton, an epidemiologist tasked with figuring out how to contain and counteract this horrible virus. She’s the one who explains it to Becker (and the reader) along the way, but that’s not all her character does for the story. Her presence has an impact on several of the power players along the way, that I can’t divulge without getting into spoilers.

I liked that the characters—while obviously supposed to be supermen in their fields—still felt realistic, flawed, capable of goofing or coming up short. There were times when I legitimately thought they were going to fail in their goals because they were human, and bad crap just happens to people.

The World

100% our world, our tech level, our history, all of that. Jordan gets bonus points for writing a story set in 2019 about a virus that’s about the end the world, hey-ooooh.

The Politics

Doesn’t really play into it. This is a “We’ve got bigger problems than politics” story.

Content

Rated R for violence and profanity.

Who’s It For

Anyone who likes a grocery store thriller that has a little bit more brainpower behind it. There’s nothing speculative in the worldbuilding, but Jordan takes the real stuff as far as he can, doing all but convincing you that somebody engineered a super zombie virus and wants to unleash it on the world because they’re sick bastards.

Why Read It

Your mileage may vary, but as for me, I love the Drinker. While I have tried (and rejected) his main Ryan Drake series, I thought this one was really damn good. He took a basic thriller concept that we’ve seen done before (and recently!), made it better, tied it to an historical event, and added a few other pieces to the mix (sorry, no spoilers) to elevate it above the staples of its genre. I liked this book and you will too.