YMMV / Star Wars: Red Harvest

• Complete Monster: Darth Scabrous is a sociopath even by the standards of other Sith. Experimenting with a certain type of plant to create a serum that turns people into mindless, monstrous zombies, Scabrous uses it on living test subjects, culminating in using Sith apprentices as test subjects. When one escapes and begins infecting the entire Sith academy, Scabrous only cares about achieving immortality. Showing his sadistic side by murdering a mercenary and trying to force his partner to eat his head before murdering him as well, Scabrous later tortures a librarian and infects him to lure in heroine Hestizo so he may cut out her heart and eat it as the final component for his immortality, murdering Hestizo's brother when he tries to save her.
• Mythology Gag: The title Red Harvest may have been intended as a reference to Blue Harvest, the Working Title George Lucas used for Return of the Jedi to disguise its true nature and avoid being overcharged for various services. It would fit, considering Blue Harvest was marketed as a horror film in order to further the ruse. Of course, there's also the fact that Blue Harvest itself was allegedly a reference to a Dashiell Hammett novel called - coincidentally enough - Red Harvest, which is thought to have been an inspiration for Akira Kurosawa, who was of course a big influence on Lucas...
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Sith students (especially Jura, Ra'at, and Scopique) get traces of interesting personalities, skills and character dynamics, and are also young conscripts who might have a chance of escaping from the Dark Side's hold, but most of them get We Hardly Knew Ye fates, Undignified Deaths, and no closure to their early arcs. Even with the author's Anyone Can Die reputation, many readers view their rapid deaths as gratuitous.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The book introduces elements like zombie Sith with all the powers of the dark side of the Force at their disposal, and zombie Sith who have zombie plants growing out of them, but it doesn't spend enough time with them to create suitably interesting scenarios.

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