Bone Harvest

by James A. Moore

Genres: Fiction, Horror

28 pages, Chapbook

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

James A. Moore was the award winning author of over forty novels, thrillers, dark fantasy and horror alike, including the critically acclaimed Fireworks, Under The Overtree, Blood Red, the Serenity Falls trilogy (featuring his recurring anti-hero, Jonathan Crowley) and his most recent novels, seven Forges, The Blasted Lands, City of Wonders , The Silent Army and the forthcoming The Gates of The Dead (Book Three in the Tides of War Series) and A Hell Within, co-authored with Charles R. Rutledge.

Reviews

[Jakob J. 🎃 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Old Bones is at it again, wearied from years of slumber under Beldam Woods (not, as I long thought, apropos of the violent misfortunes that befall its wanderers, Bedlam Woods).

There is a convoluted mythology at work here, spanning several novels and short stories of Moore’s work, and the earth-dwelling god with the power of manipulating the underlying structure of organic fauna, assimilating them for armor and sustenance, feeding off the marrow and the aroma of toxic fungal spores, is also cursed, or gifted, with the dreams of his victims ossifying within him as he harvests, fulfilling his malicious purpose.

This is not a Halloween tale, but the structure of the mythos is enmeshed with the season. It’s not intended as a setup for further reading, but there is too much expanded story alluded to for this to be an entirely satisfying standalone.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this chapbook as part of a grab-bag of books from Cemetery Dance, and gave it a quick read one morning. It's about a bone creature who resurrects himself through a gruesome process involving mushrooms and four innocent people. The story is part of a larger group of works, which Moore explains in the foreword to the chapbook, and which feels necessary to understand the context of the story; otherwise, it's a brutal read that doesn't serve a lot of purpose.

The story is told well, and is intriguing enough for me to be curious about the other works, but I'm not going to seek them out right now. Moore also notes that the story is intended to give the bone creature a backstory to make it more than just an evil creature doing evil things, but I'm not sure he succeeded with it. He gives the creature a moment of compassion, but it's twisted up into something darker, and it doesn't provide any compassion or sympathy for the beast. It's just a beast.