- Title:
- Harvested
- Author:
- Troy Lambert
- Release:
- November 30, 2020
- Format:
- Audiobook
- Narrator:
- David A. Conatser
Harvested cums off like a guy’s fantasy, at many points. It’s not the first action/detective drama I’ve listened to where single, horny women constantly bombard the male protagonist who all want him, despite his unavailability. Hell, that was even a plot point in a Supernatural episode many years ago.
The whole “gruff (former) detective on a mission to find out who killed his wife” thing is also played the fuck out. And yet again, that was also a major plot point in the show Rick and Morty. I wish people would use some creativity and shop-shitting out the same 5 plot points over and over, littered with tropes.
The main character is moderately sexist and racist at times. In one example, a Korean man is constantly called “The Asian“, instead of his name or title. If I remember correctly, that wasn’t even in the dialogue, it was the author/book itself saying “said The Asian” constantly. It all cums across as extremely distasteful.
All of that aside, the story itself was pretty competent, which left me pleasantly surprised. While I recognized the author’s name, I couldn’t remember from where. I knew from my foggy memory, not to expect much. When I was done listening, I looked it up on my blog and saw that he co-wrote and wrote the “Capital City Murders”, or as I began calling them “Crapital Shitty Murders” or “Mediocre Mysteries”.
The plot chugged along slowly, and was relatively free of action, but felt incredibly real. Ol’ what’s-his-name felt like a genuine P.I. getting the run-around from a bunch of shady scumfucks and digging through a disgusting conspiracy. It didn’t feel out of the realm of possibility, and many of the things he had to deal with felt believable. Either because of my own past experiences with getting the run-around, and dealing with constant lies, or people I’ve known who had to deal with similar shady shit.
If you can look past the male-fantasy aspects of some incel constantly (mentally) commenting on women’s bodies and making excuses for why he couldn’t be with them because he’s just so damn loyal to his wife; and the whole “the Asian” thing, it’s worth a read.
As a side note, I don’t know if the whole “Asian mafia” thing is a stereotype or not, though I’ll say it seems as though it might. I say this because the only instances I can think of are Fringe, Sons of Anarchy, Mayans MC, the Grand Theft Auto Games, The Continental, and Saints Row games, none of which are particularly well known for their ‘accurate representation’ of various groups. So maybe some people would take issue with that being included as a plot point, however, I will note it did seem to have been done respectfully. It seemed the author made an attempt to portray the Korean culture in a way that humanized them, instead of making them out to be these comic-book villains like they so often are.
The audio narration was great. I take issue with the narrator being unable to tell O and 0 apart. More importantly, however, is how he kept pronouncing “envelope” as “onvelope”, which I already find insufferably annoying. You don’t “onter” a room. A room isn’t “on-veloped” in darkness when the lights are turned out. But then midway through the book, he started saying “envelope”. Goddammit! If you’re going to mispronounce a word, or say it right, at least do it consistently! Ugh.
His female voices were better than most, and overall, I enjoyed the narration. He did passable Korean accents (to my untrained ears), and I never once had any issues telling characters apart while they were speaking.
NOTE: This copy was provided to me free of charge as a digital review copy. The opinions stated in this review are mine and mine alone, I was not paid or requested to give this book a certain rating, suggestion, or approval.