The Eighth Day by Dianne K. Salerni
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Eighth Day involves an Arthurian legend, a secret magical 8th day, and the people who can cross between the seven day world we live in and the magical 8th day that exists in parallel. Your enjoyment of this book will likely mirror how much that intrigues you.
The book is exactly that - a kid wakes up one day and sees the world is basically stopped. Electronics don't work, no one exists, and everything is just quiet. The next day, everything is okay again. The rest of the story involves the conspiracy/world with this in mind, pretty high concept stuff for a middle grade book.
In its favor is the fact that the book bursts right out the gate with the plot, not wasting a ton of time. The problem with that is the way the story itself kind of stalls out as things progress. It doesn't necessarily help that this weird mashup of science fictional tropes and high fantasy doesn't always make a ton of sense, but that this is a pretty fast-paced read with some cool concepts and ideas definitely makes up for it.
Overall, not bad for a middle grade book, although some more sophistication and aging up of the material might have benefited things on a whole. Worth a look if you're into this sort of thing.
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