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The Eighth Day
It began without warning...
The babies stillborn, monstrously deformed...the adults dying, one by one.
Then without reason it stopped. The beautiful New England town forgot. Once again healthy children skipped along its tree-lined streets. Everything was as it had been before. -- Except for eight children set apart from all the rest. Angelically beautiful...devilishly smart...unnaturally secretive. To get too close to them...to ask too many questions about them was to die. Horribly. Inexplicably.
One young doctor was willing to risk his career, his very life to know why. One beautiful woman, a child already growing in her womb, unknowingly held the answer. But time was running out. Soon no one would be safe. First Cayoga Falls, then the world, would witness the dark and terrible dawning of...THE EIGHTH DAY
The babies stillborn, monstrously deformed...the adults dying, one by one.
Then without reason it stopped. The beautiful New England town forgot. Once again healthy children skipped along its tree-lined streets. Everything was as it had been before. -- Except for eight children set apart from all the rest. Angelically beautiful...devilishly smart...unnaturally secretive. To get too close to them...to ask too many questions about them was to die. Horribly. Inexplicably.
One young doctor was willing to risk his career, his very life to know why. One beautiful woman, a child already growing in her womb, unknowingly held the answer. But time was running out. Soon no one would be safe. First Cayoga Falls, then the world, would witness the dark and terrible dawning of...THE EIGHTH DAY
- GenresHorror
284 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1983
42 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 26, 2024
The small Vermont town of Cayoga Falls has had a strange history of epidemics during the last few decades. First came the rash of illnesses, followed by the inexplicable stillbirths. Later, once everything seemed back to normal, children started to be born with albinism. At least, they look like albinos, but aren't sensitive to the sun. They're also much, much smarter than average children, and may even possess psychic abilities. The rest of the town shuns them, but the young Dr. Larry Kazan means to find out what caused these children's condition, and if it's related to the illnesses from years ago. Unfortunately it seems everyone that has dug into this topic in the past has ended up dead. And no, this isn't your typical "fear the other/different"-type tale.
This was a fast, fun read for me. I've never been too big on creepy kid stories. Creepy children stories, however, freak the shit out of me. One creepy kid, I can handle that. An army of them? Just nuke them from space, I say. Too bad they'd probably sense my intentions and I'd end up having a tragic fatal accident while trimming my fingernails.
The plot here is always moving -- the subtle chills slowly ramping up alongside new revelations -- and there's very little padding, which I very much appreciate when it comes to 80s horror. Nothing kills the mood more quickly for me than having to wade through pages and pages of filler due to some publisher-mandated word quota. Also, the characters were developed just well enough so that I cared what happened to them.
Though I wouldn't say the book is necessarily scary -- much of it felt more like a medical thriller than anything -- it was entertaining, and I'd definitely be down for checking out Leimas's two other horror novels.
This was a fast, fun read for me. I've never been too big on creepy kid stories. Creepy children stories, however, freak the shit out of me. One creepy kid, I can handle that. An army of them? Just nuke them from space, I say. Too bad they'd probably sense my intentions and I'd end up having a tragic fatal accident while trimming my fingernails.
The plot here is always moving -- the subtle chills slowly ramping up alongside new revelations -- and there's very little padding, which I very much appreciate when it comes to 80s horror. Nothing kills the mood more quickly for me than having to wade through pages and pages of filler due to some publisher-mandated word quota. Also, the characters were developed just well enough so that I cared what happened to them.
Though I wouldn't say the book is necessarily scary -- much of it felt more like a medical thriller than anything -- it was entertaining, and I'd definitely be down for checking out Leimas's two other horror novels.
December 30, 2022
What a delightfully creepy read, and one full of lots of nice twists and turns. Our main protagonist, Larry, is a young medical doctor doing a residency stint in Vermont. The hospital is close to the town where his wife Anna grew up so she happily went with him from NYC. Anna's kid sister Becky joins them there as her parents are in Europe for the summer. Right off the bat we know this is a 'small town with a big evil' type story, but Leimas does a masterful job in building the suspense here and keeping you guessing until the denouement.
Larry's boss at the hospital assigned him some work on a research project he was undertaking. It seems, back in the 1940s and again in the 1960s, many people in the town of Cayoga Falls suffered all kinds of strange and often terminal illnesses, along with many miscarriages and deformed infants. Yet, it also seems that anyone who looks into this finds themselves with an untimely death. There are also several albino children in town, way more than any statistical probability. When Larry's boss has a bizarre accident resulting in his death, Larry starts getting a little worried about what he has stumbled into...
What makes this such a good read is how Leimas manages to keep misdirecting the reader; just as you think you got the mystery solved, it takes another twist. Leimas also punctuates this with some rather brutal scenes (like the prologue's rape sequence) as well as some rather touching human drama. Good stuff for sure! 4.5 creepy stars!
Larry's boss at the hospital assigned him some work on a research project he was undertaking. It seems, back in the 1940s and again in the 1960s, many people in the town of Cayoga Falls suffered all kinds of strange and often terminal illnesses, along with many miscarriages and deformed infants. Yet, it also seems that anyone who looks into this finds themselves with an untimely death. There are also several albino children in town, way more than any statistical probability. When Larry's boss has a bizarre accident resulting in his death, Larry starts getting a little worried about what he has stumbled into...
What makes this such a good read is how Leimas manages to keep misdirecting the reader; just as you think you got the mystery solved, it takes another twist. Leimas also punctuates this with some rather brutal scenes (like the prologue's rape sequence) as well as some rather touching human drama. Good stuff for sure! 4.5 creepy stars!
June 19, 2013
The horror began without warning...The babies stillborn, monstrously deformed...The adults dying, one by one. Then, just as suddenly as it began - without cause or reason - it stopped. The beautiful New England town forgot. Once again healthy children skipped and played along its tree-lined streets. Everything was as it had been before. Except for eight children set apart from all the rest. Angelically beautiful...devilishly smart...unnaturally secretive. To get too close to them...to ask too many questions about them was to die. Horribly. Inexplicably.
One young doctor was willing to risk his career, his very life to know why. One beautiful woman, a child already growing within her womb, unknowingly held the answer. But time was running out. Soon no one would be safe. First Cayoga Falls, then the world, would witness the dark and terrible dawning of...The Eighth Day.
I'm not sure if the horror of the plot would be considered dated or not - at least by today's standards - however I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. In my opinion, the plot was unusual and gripping. I give this book an A+! and look forward to reading more from this author in the future.
One young doctor was willing to risk his career, his very life to know why. One beautiful woman, a child already growing within her womb, unknowingly held the answer. But time was running out. Soon no one would be safe. First Cayoga Falls, then the world, would witness the dark and terrible dawning of...The Eighth Day.
I'm not sure if the horror of the plot would be considered dated or not - at least by today's standards - however I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. In my opinion, the plot was unusual and gripping. I give this book an A+! and look forward to reading more from this author in the future.
dnf
April 29, 2024This is "The Midwitch Cukoos" by John Wyndham
June 29, 2025
In small town America, the new doctor in town with his wife and teenage sister in law encounter a group of ‘special’ children with grand ideas for the future of the world
Think Wyndham’s ‘the midwych cuckoos’ meets Grant’s ‘Oxrun station’
A good book but I found it a bit slow going, almost took me 8 days
Think Wyndham’s ‘the midwych cuckoos’ meets Grant’s ‘Oxrun station’
A good book but I found it a bit slow going, almost took me 8 days
Read
June 21, 2023This book was a weird and wild ride. It's written in the early 80's and it definitely suffers from that in some areas. However, it went in a totally different direction than what I thought it would based off the synopsis and ended up being really fun. The stakes rise throughout the book and things get weirder and weirder. I truly did not know what to expect and that was fun.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews