Eight Days in October by DM Schwartz Review
A haunted city on the brink of collapse, a family legacy shrouded in ghosts, men driven by honor and revenge in a world that recognizes only decay. These are the circumstances of Eight Days in October by DM Schwartz, a horror novel that pulls gently from weird fiction to tell the tale of Adderlass, a city built to end in ruination, along with the lives that will intersect inside it.
At least, those should be the stakes of the novel, and there should be plenty of mystery surrounding Adderlass and the supernatural events that occur within it. However, Eight Days in October is more content with expounding at the reader rather than letting events unfold. More time is spent re-hashing Winston Churchill’s role in World War II than a scene wherein Simon Cubbins finds spectres in his great grandfather’s mansion.
This is amplified with the introduction of the Nagasaki father/daughter duo. Their introductory chapter is rife with references to stock Japanese culture: samurai, Bushido, honor, explanations of Buddhism, that it becomes rather uncomfortable to read through. Suddenly there is a yakuza wielding a katana and it feels incredibly stereotypical without a hint of self-awareness.
At the same time, the setting of Adderlass remained nebulous and hard to mentally pin down. This too seems unintentional and not with the purpose of creating a mystery. Adderlass is supposedly a city created using ancient evil artifacts, and it’s mentioned that this is why it has fallen into ruin, rife with drug use and prostitution. There are federal agents investigating the goings-on, people seem to be living their lives there, but is it a modern city? Is it a city infused with medieval architecture crumbling next to hastily-built projects? It’s difficult to care what goes on in a place so devoid of, well, anything.
There are a few strong chapters in Eight Days in October from DM Schwartz, but these brief moments aren’t enough to carry the remainder of the novel. These chapters would have been better suited to short stories in a more focused collection than small pieces of a whole they can be divorced from entirely. The bulk of Eight Days in October feels like being on the receiving end of a lecture you didn’t deserve instead of reading a horror novel.
Buy Eight Days in October on Amazon.
