Took awhile to get into it and it did skip around. Had a hard time keeping up with it.

Maybe I'm being harsh but the creepy artwork and blurb on the cover of this book seem kind of misleading to me. A thriller it may be but a horror it is not. And the author's decision to focus on a pair of hysterical mothers unravelling the mystery of their children's true nature rather than the body horror/awakening of the boys involved drains way too much of the eeriness out of this story. It's a shame too since the plot showed a lot of potential. Disappointing.

Solid 3 stars. The pacing of the novel itself was a little slow, but I did find myself flying through it. I enjoy John Saul's style of writing. I find his novels to be creepy and easy to read. Definitely a curl up on the couch over the weekend kind of read. The concept of the God Project was interesting. I can't say that I've come across this particular plot before. Possibly my favorite part of the novel was the ending. I did feel like it was a bit rushed and thrown in, however, I love a truly horrific ending.. Reminded me a bit of the very end of Pet Sematary.

A disturbing idea of manipulation and experimentation, but couldn't help feeling I'd read the story before in another form. A couple of twists at the end that were fairly predictable but an OK read.

What an ending! Review to come.

I don't even know if this book is good or not, but I REALLY loved it as a kid. We didn't read a whole lot of John Saul in my house -- it was mostly King and Koontz -- but we dipped our toes in the pool.

Something fishy is going on in the once quiet town of Eastbury, Massachusetts, where two women are brought together after losing a child. Sally Montgomery loses her infant daughter Julie to SIDS, but she is convinced it was something else. Lucy Corliss loses her son Randy, who is reported as a runaway, but she is convinced he was kidnapped. Both parents discover that their children were secretly being surveyed by CHILD (Children's Health Institute for Latent Diseases) without consent, but why? Written over twenty years ago, I expected this book to be a bit outdated, but John Saul points out the horrifying possibilities and ethical issues surrounding technology that remain a concern to this day, terrifying, one of his best works! I highly recommend this book, conspiracy theories, genetic engineering, kidnapping, murder, this book has it all, a must read!

Interesting to read an 80s paperback horror thriller today. I’d put Stephen King & Clive Barker in the top of that class, then maybe Peter Straub & Ramsey Campbell, then third tier is Robin Cook, Dean Koontz, and John Saul. Saul’s writing is perfunctory – all story, not much jazz to go with it. Which works for a thriller – Stephen King is all story too, but he gives a psychological depth and detail to setting & the supernatural that puts him as a stepping stone to someone like Donna Tartt – still largely story (not stream of consciousness or something abstract like William Burroughs) but that’s pushing that psychological detail into the dense layers of an onion. John Saul isn’t quite there (of course) but if you want to read something like Donna Tartt, might as well read Donna Tartt.

This one reminded me of the evil children of Village of the Damned/Midwich Cuckoos (even getting into Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhoods End a bit) filtered through the suburbia of Spielberg or Stephen King. The government agency manipulating children has some standard anti-science slant but also resembles Firestarter or even Beyond the Black Rainbow. Dress this in super stylish looks and the bad guys are Dr. Barry Nyles…

One thing that’s quaint is the usage of computers – pre-internet. Essentially these are word processors with cryptic code numbers on files in schools – one of our main characters is a “computer whiz” which means she can essentially type quickly (from what I gathered). It’s funny how simple the world was back then. Even something like the isolated estate where the kidnapped children are kept – that shit would be found on Google maps these days.

Too much medical jargon. I had trouble keeping up. It also took a long time to really get anywhere.

The ending will floor you!

De macht van het kwaad door John Saul

Written in the "good ol' days" before WiFi etc, the challenge to search medical records in order to discover what is happening to young children leads a disparate group of family/friends/and other interested parties to work together to save their children. Who to trust? Trust your family? trust your doctor? trust people you've never met before? As always, the devil is in the details.