The Seventh Day Review

Title: The Seventh Day
Author: Scott Shepherd
Date Purchased: 1/4/2014
Price Paid: $0.99
Date Finished: 1/3/2021
Rating: 3/5

Do you want to know what’s worse than reading book one of a series and never reading book two?

Reading a book that was clearly written to have a sequel…that was never published.

I was looking forward to reading The Seventh Day as it has been a long time since I’ve read a book that wasn’t part of a series or a greater universe. To have one book that would build a world, tell a story, and wrap things up all in one volume can be quite refreshing. And that’s what I thought I was getting here.

Boy, was I wrong.

The premise behind this story is an interesting one – several years ago the Earth was visited by the “Strangers”, an alien race that cannibalized the planet. All sources of power, most of the metal, and almost all of the people were gone in a matter of minutes. This was now called “The Seventh Day”.

Those left behind were referred to as the “Remaining”, a scattered group of humans that did what they could to scrape together a life out of the ruins. The story begins with one of the Remaining, Joad, as he nears the end of his journey home. He was stranded on the other side of the world on The Seventh Day and was determined to make it back home to his wife.

As the story progresses, we meet more of the Remaining who join up with a reluctant Joad out of necessity. Not all of them are pleasant characters though – we also meet four brothers who become hell-bent on killing Joad and his new traveling companions. For, you know, reasons.

Not too far into the book we learn that some of the Remaining have developed powers: Fixer is able to make mechanical objects function without power, Laura can see into people’s dreams, and Primo (one of the brothers) has learned to control the weather. We eventually learn that almost everyone has a power, they just don’t know it yet.

Shepherd uses flashbacks to show the reader what each character was doing at the moment of the invasion, and what led them to the lives they were currently living. Too many times flashbacks seem superfluous and boring, but these were well written and added to the story.

So far, so good, right?

Well, the final third of the book goes a bit off the rails. Not really in a bad way, but in a “let’s reveal some plot twists” way. There wouldn’t be a problem with that normally, but the reader gets written some checks that never get cashed.

In the event that you are thinking about picking this one up to read, I’ll stop with the story recap. Suffice to say the final scene is one that leaves the reader looking for some resolution that just won’t come.

The book was fairly decent overall. I was a little unimpressed with Shepherd’s character development – many of the characters are fairly one-dimensional and very few of them show any true change throughout the story.

Interestingly enough, as I skimmed some reviews for The Seventh Day I found that one of the largest complaints (outside of “where is the next book”) was one of my favorite parts: we never really learn much about the aliens or their motivations.

To some, this was a massive missing piece. I saw this as a clever framing of the narrative. It said to the reader “something really horrible happened, and that’s what made the world this way, but that isn’t this story.” And I liked that.

That being said, towards the end references are made to there being more to the invasion than anyone was aware. But I guess we’ll find out about that in book two. Oh…right.

Final Thoughts: A decent premise, a little thin on character development, wish there had been a sequel.