Water Harvest by Eric Diehl

Title: Water Harvest
Author: Eric Diehl
Publication Date: 2011
Length: about 420 pages (ebook)

House Alar, the most powerful of the Houses, is attacked by one of the lunar colonies that is trying to take control of the coveted moisture in the atmosphere, with the help of the Viizar, who use hallucinogens to bend the laws of nature. The balance of power is thrown off, and Cairn, heir to Alar, must work together with members of other houses, as well as strange cave-dwelling people, to take back Alar and the planet.

At the start of this book, so many characters are introduced that by the time they were mentioned again I'd usually forgotten who they were. That was pretty frustrating. But eventually, at least the main characters became clear to me, and for the most part I liked them.

The war that is basically the plot was interesting. The main problem I had was that I didn't understand the background. There's one chapter that takes place far in the past, but at that time they already had the problem with not enough moisture in the atmosphere, and lunar colonies trying to steal the moisture. But it seemed like the origin of this problem was never actually explained. Nor were the bacteria that live in the air; I'm not really clear what they do. So I could have used more background to these big problems. But aside from that, the story was enjoyable and engaging.

Also, I hate to say it, but this book was just too long. I'm not opposed to reading a chunkster now and then, but this one took me a full month to read.

3 stars.

Full disclosure: Free ebook copy received from the author.