Dead
Harvest (The Collector Book One)
by
Chris F. Holm
Angry
Robot Books (2012)
381
pages
Sam
Thornton is a Collector. No, not the "Market Warrior" kind.
Sam is basically a repo man for the underworld, plucking souls from
the living when it's their time to die. He's kind of like a flatfoot,
menial version of the Grim Reaper. And it's when Sam is tasked with
collecting the soul of an accused murderer that his conscience and
better nature finally bubble back to the surface of what remains of
his humanity.
I enjoy
urban fantasy, especially when it has noir-ish elements mixed in, and
Dead Harvest has 'em by the
bowlful. Sam smokes with
impunity, leaving piles of spent coffin nails in his wake while
waiting for his marks to show up. His taskmaster counts as the
ultimate femme fatale, Lilith. And he has a healthy disdain for just
about everything in existence. So, it's no big deal that the next
person whose soul requires collecting is a teenage girl named Kate,
presently incarcerated for the grizzly torture and murder of her
little brother and parents.
The
job should be a piece of cake. The souls Sam collects are tainted or
damaged in one way or another, corrupted by some aspect of evil, so
they essentially deserve to
have their lives ended. But when Sam tracks down a freshly perished
body to inhabit--did I not mention Sam is a disembodied soul in his
own right?--and tracks down Kate, he is overwhelmed by the fact that
he sense no evil in her. As far as he's concerned, there's no way
Kate could have committed those atrocities. She's been setup and Sam
takes it upon himself to not only find out who, but protect Kate from
the tug-of-war between Heaven and Hell that is underway as each side
seems bent on her death.
The
book is equal parts murder mystery and cat-and-mouse chase. Sam and
Kate contend with each other nearly as much as with the unseen forces
pulling the strings start to unleash Hell in order to collect Kate's
soul. And when they're not on the run, with demons and police and an
even more powerful Collector named Bishop on their heels, Sam and
Kate try to piece together just what happened to her and why.
While
I thought the relationship built between Sam and Kate was done
remarkably well, and the action is very engrossing at nearly every
turn, the broader aspects of this world felt too vague for me to
really appreciate. God and the Devil are kept as abstract ideas, the
same with Heaven and Hell, despite the close nature they play with
the current of the story. Sam's world is really kept at arm's length,
and it's through flashbacks to his final days leading to his
initiation as a Collector, where his motivations are revealed. The
book's ending is satisfactory to a point, but I get the sense that
the second book in the series, The Wrong Goodbye,
will be the place I go to for any hope of getting a clearer picture
of Sam's world.
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