I Am A Harvester of Light is an incredibly interesting story! It’s about the lives of inhabiters of a forest. These people grow up believing that darkness consumes you. As such, they have Harvesters of Light, who are responsible for collecting light for everyone so that they’re not consumed by darkness. This civilization is led by the Forset Council. But the inhabitants of the village soon come to learn that the Forest Council has been feeding them lies and that everything they grew up believing is wrong.

I think this unique story and way of living is incredibly fascinating. The author did a great job picking such an intriguing topic and telling an interesting tale.

I did encounter a few spelling errors, grammatical errors, and awkward syntax, but it wasn’t so bad that I was cringing while reading.

I suppose my main issue with the novella is that it was too short and often felt like a vague diary because it wasn’t that detailed in the descriptions. To start off, the beginning of the story felt too much like a history lesson. We are given the entire story of the forest, the Harvesters, the council, and the Shadowers all in one go. It was interesting, but I would have preferred it if we slowly learned this information in a more natural way as the story progressed. I wanted to ‘see’ the character going out and doing things and explaining the history along the way, rather than basically putting an entire synopsis at the beginning.

Furthermore, the entire novella was not very intense or action packed. There were definitely huge events, but the story was so fast-paced and the author skipped over these too quickly. That’s why the novella often read like a diary. Diaries are usually just recappings of events; they don’t cause the reader to feel like they’re ‘living’ the events or watching them as they’re happening. But that’s what I would have preferred.

If the author did want this novella to act as some sort of “record of events, left behind by the main character,” I think a good model to follow would be Rick Riordan’s series, The Kane Chronicles. Each book is supposedly a recording tape left behind by the main characters. These characters recap the events that happened to them. This is made clear at the beginning, but as the characters start recapping the stories, we get fully immersed and feel as if we’re actually experiencing each event in great detail. Then the funny dialogues between the two main characters may pull us out of that immersion at the beginning or end of each chapter. But it’s done in a great way so that the stories serve as ‘diaries’ of sorts, but still have the full details.

The novella definitely could use some improvements, but once again, I was really impressed by the overall idea. Despite my gripes, I wasn’t bored with the story. I read it very quickly in one sitting. I’d just love to see it expanded upon and have more action, drama, and detail. ( )