The Harbinger: Books 1 - 4

by Bryan Patrick Wolfe

659 pages, Paperback

Published April 13, 2019

Reviews

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had so much promise so I stuck with it for a really long time, but eventually I gave up because I wasn't enjoying it. I liked the plague aspect. I liked many of the characters and their back-stories. I thought the plot was moving along well... but it just kept devolving into gratuitous sex and sexual descriptions. It's not porn or erotica (we don't get lengthy descriptions of the actual sex acts), but the descriptions of both men and women are often overly sexual (women are either barely described or have big breasts as their major descriptor, men's dicks are described ad nauseum). It's simply not necessary, either to the storyline or to the plot development.

Look, I'm a liberal pansexual woman who hangs out in sex-positive spaces, so it's not like I'm a homophobe or squeamish about sex. But the story would be moving along, and suddenly it was like a 14-year old obsessed with sex took over. I didn't need to know every man's dick size (honestly, as a woman on the internet, I'd be grateful to never ever hear about another man's dick, even though I like men). It would have been adequate to say one character found another attractive, rather than go into great detail about fantasies of plowing asses (seriously, over and over again?).

I'm a great fan of books having LGBTQ+ characters. I don't care if men find each other attractive, and I don't care if they have sex in the book. But I would suggest that *if* the author wants to appeal to a wider segment of the population (by which I mean not just gay men), that he tones it down. Describe women in more three-dimensional ways, both in personality and in body. Avoid telling us every single male character's dick size, and maybe don't have every character obsessed with having sex (in detail) -- during an apocalypse! Of course, the author can feel free to write about whatever he likes, but I'd bet a lot of readers would prefer more plot and more character development that's not based on who's having sex with whom.

As far as the narrator: He was adequate. He wasn't the best narrator but he wasn't so bad I quit the book because of him.

[Tami Howard · Rating 1 out of 5]

This could have been an entertaining story had it not been for the author using it as a vehicle for ranting on racism and homosexuality. A novel can be a powerful tool to make people think and question long held beliefs, but this writer is so heavy handed that he ends up driving the reader away. The story was completely lost in the more and more offensive examples of rabid racism I finally threw up my hands and returned the book for my credit back. At least he admitted racism exists in all the races, I would have liked to see where the story was going but could no longer wade through the diatribe.