So I picked up the text and started flipping through it and got very bored very early on. Horror stories are usually like that for me, because they are so darn predictable and so filled with pent up teenage hormones, gasoline fumes, and slimy body fluids. Maybe back when I was 16, all this horrorshow ultra-vee with a John Mellencamp soundtrack might have charged me up, but at some point after 30 I stopped worrying about how badass I am or might be and the whole adrenaline pumping thing turned into a real yawner.So you don't scare me.By page 27, I've got every twist in the book figured out. I know where it's all going. Sure enough, there on page 83 you pop your first complete non-shocker. The only thing I'm even the littlest bit surprised by is how quickly you go ahead and give away the game. A normal author is going to savor his twists and turns, but I'm thinking, "Of course you know how jaded and sophisticated story readers are now days. You are giving away the first twist so that you'll distract the readers from thinking about the next one and the next." And it's pretty clever and it just might work, but you don't scare me.See I've been thinking the whole time just stupid your puny fictional town is with its wimpy little fictional Halloween game and just how stupid the punks in your fictional little town are compared with even the inbred toughs I grew up with. And I've been thinking the whole time, "Is that all you got? Is that all they have to deal with? That ain't nothing. I've been through worse than that. This is child's play. I had more friends killed than that and no body thought it was a fun game. I've seen longer odds than that and been deeper in the corn field than that." I've already been there. You're like the Chuck Palahniuk of horror stories, trying to convince me of just how great it would be to go into the office with a broken ocular bone when it’s clear you've never actually been punched hard in the face in your whole life. Save your crap for the pampered suburbanites. So no, you ain't going to scare me with your lame pumpkin heads and spooky stories. But somewhere around page 117 it clicked with me that you know that. I mean, you'd been screaming out that most obvious fact since page one and here I was too busy judging your story to hear you. Here I was caught up in thinking this was a horror story because that's what you told your publisher, and that's how they marketed the book, and it's what they painted on the cover, and that's what probably 99% of the people who read the book thought. And maybe that's all what 99% of the people who read the story got, and maybe they didn't see the twists coming because well they hadn't been there and no blame on them for it. They just hadn't walked in those shoes and taken those steps through that town, and maybe you did scare them gently and good for them. It's just shotgun blasts in the graveyard - good clean fun so long as it isn't pointed at anyone. It's not turning off the headlights and plowing through the turns in the wrong lane, or playing chicken with the train where the first one off the tracks has to take another drink. It's not mangled bodies, or burying whole families. It's not the real thing. It's pumpkinheads and candy, and you know that can't scare me.Of course you do know that. You don't scare me and you don't mean to. I guessed all your twists because you were never trying to hide them from me. You knew you couldn't hide them from me, and what would have been the point of doing so anyway? I lived the real story. I know this isn't a horror story. I know that this is really a war story. I know you have to write it as a horror story because if you told a true story, most people would either not believe it or fail to understand it. When you put it down on paper, even if you write it in blood, it isn't quite the same as being there. It never can be. So you tell some lies because that's the only way to tell the story to people who don't already get it, and it's ok because they are never going to really get it any way. They can't. And lies are easier to believe anyway. So why just four stars? Well, you know that too. Because you know you are just a chicken shit poser. You had it easy, and even if you didn't you still chickened out and wrote candy coated sugary faerie tales where the complete loner gets to be the hero and you get out with the girl and your family and it’s all over. But it isn't like that, and it doesn't come that easily. Your way is alot more fun. Yeah of course it had to burn, but as much as I would love to say that I was the one who burned it and that I saved everyone, it didn't happen that way and you know it.Not that I wouldn’t tell the same lies when it comes my turn to sit around the digital campfire and tell the story of the October Boy. You know I’m still scared to tell the truth too.
Amazon has this listed as a novel, and priced accordingly, but it's really a novella. I started and finished it in an evening, which is as it should be. This is the story of a single evening, after all. Hallowe'en. The young men of a small town have been kept locked up for five days, without food, and then set loose on the emptied streets with one purpose: to kill the October Boy before the church bells strike midnight. Who is the October Boy? Why it's Sawtooth Jack, of the vines for arms and broomsticks for feet, and a hacksaw smile carved in his pumpkin head. He's been growing in the field all year, and brought to life for just this one night. Whoever kills the Boy gets to leave town, forever.The publisher blurb compares this to Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, but I haven't read that since I was a boy myself, and don't much remember it. It reminds me more of Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, had Stephen King written it. If that last sentence alone isn't making you reach for your keyboard or your Buy button, then I don't know what to do with you. I have certain prejudices as a reader I fool myself into thinking of as taste. One is a dislike of the present tense in fiction. Another is narration which addresses the reader directly. Dark Harvest uses both of these - I grudgingly admit - excellently. The use of the present keeps everything immediate, and Partridge manages the difficult task of speaking to the reader without breaking the Fourth Wall (another one of those prejudices of mine). A strong book and a fun, seasonal story. I would have preferred a longer, more in-depth version of the same tale, but I wonder if that would have robbed the story of its immediacy. -Four Stars
What do You think about Dark Harvest (2007)?
This is a small novel (around 100 pages). The premise was something we've seen somewhere in another books but the twists Herr Norman gave made it unique. Halloween is a time of trick or treat - so what better than to chase the Pumpkin monster instead of him chasing you? Every year boys with 16 or 17 year old must try to stop the October Boy (or Ol'Hacksaw Face) reaching from the outskirts of the town to Church, in the center of the Midwestern town. The October boy is only armed with a knife and a nightmarish reputation. Boys give another meaning to the saying "You must confront your fears".The story itself was told in two of the boys perspectives and interestingly from the October Boy's. I Really enjoy the story behind the monster. What I really didn't understand and maybe it was me - was the reason of why. Why must they capture before midnight? What would happened if they didn't? The characterization is there - mostly on the October Boy. I really enjoy the setting (1963 - even if it wouldn't change anything if the author told us that it was 1988) and the flow of the tale. It's quite small, so anyone can read it in one sitting or two.Check the covers. Brilliant.
—Paulo "paper books always" Carvalho
It was entertained but I was expecting something better NOT REACHED EXPECTATIONSI had huge expectation about this short novel since I had just read a short story by the same author, Norman Partridge, in the anthology Halloween, edited by Paula Guran. The short story was titled Three Doors and it was one of the stories that I enjoyed the most. That's why I didn't hesitate to engage into this, after that anthology into this novel. However, I wasn't able to find the same "magic" in the writing of this novel that I found in the previous short story. I detected some hints here and there, but in the overall reading experience, those small oasis of fresh brilliance were dried up in some much cliché horror elements. I don't know if those found hints were that maybe, just maybe, the tale started as a short story but suddenly turned into a little broader novel. If so, and it's just my humble guess, maybe the transition between format ruined the potential of becoming a true gem. CHARACTERSThe story has a fair ammount of chracters but the real four main characters are:Pete McCormick: A teenager with troubles with his dad and with the local authority, and who is convinced that "The Run", the annual mysterious event, is his chance to get the means of finally escaping from town and making a life in another place.Kelly Haines: A smart girl who lost her parents and was forced to live in the town which celebrates this, "The Run", the annual mysterious event with deadly repercusions. She is clever enough to know that "The Run" is more than everybody think.Jerry Ricks: The town's sheriff and easily the most powerful and fearsome figure of authority in the population. He knows what it's behind of the mystery involving "The Run" and what really is.The October Boy: A creepy paranormal creature with a pumpkin as head, erupting flames from the holes of the eyes and mouth. It's the pivotal element of the mysterious event known as "The Run" but there is something about "The October Boy" who is unknown to the most of the population. FINAL THOUGHTSI don't regret of having read the book and that's something I think, but certainly, after my fulfilling reading experience with the short story Three Doors, with a delightful writing style, that I expected more of this author, having the freedom of lenght of a novel to be able to develop a more complicated and rich story, but keeping the same remarkable and unique style that I found on the mentioned short story.At the end, Dark Harvest contains some good plot twists and it's an entertained work, but it's not so far from any other horror story with a setup of a retired town, secluded from other populations, involving teenagers, some abusive local authority, and a paranormal entity causing fear used as an intrument to keep in control the town.
—Alejandro
It's Halloween time in a Midwestern town 1963.Someone haunting is amidst the town The October Boy cometh, but why and what is his origin one thing fir sure is he has a Jack O Lantern head. There is some dark goings on in this town once a year will this be the last will it come to an end?The October Boy is something of a creation in same way Frankenstein created his being in which both are sent on a path of fear and terror amongst the town dwellers.Written in a nice prose flows well, a story of terror in a town and a boys destiny. “Every kid in this town, chasing after a bogeyman with a pumpkin for a head, scared to death of a walking Scarecrow with a big sharp butcher knife. Every kid in this town, thinking that there’s a way out of a nightmare through a fairy tale,when there’s really no way out at all.” "We’re gonna take the Run straight to our buddy Sawtooth Jack, and I am gonna splatter his ass before he even gets a chance To step across the Line.”
—Lou
