Guillermo del Toro

A combination medical disease-outbreak thriller and vampire horror story, this book combines cliches and formulas from both, but it does it in a way that reminds me that cliches and formulas get to be that way for a reason. It's pretty much the furthest thing from great literature imaginable, but it is quite successfully suspenseful and engaging. It's also got an extraordinarily cinematic feel to it, which I can only assume is del Toro's doing. Reading it is so much like watching a movie show more that it almost cries out for a tub of popcorn to sit on your lap while you read. (Although, depending on how strong your stomach is, there are parts where you may very well not want to be eating anything at all.)

It's also kind of refreshing these days to come across a story like this, where the vampires are simply, unambiguously monstrous. Vampirism here isn't a romantic curse, it's a vile parasitic disease. And it's one whose medical details are interesting, fairly original, and have had enough thought put into them that I found it remarkably easy to willingly suspend disbelief for all the (admittedly very many) ways in which they were implausible.

Since this is the first book in a trilogy, the ending escalates things rather than concluding them, but at least it's very up front about the fact. (Few things are more annoying than a book that looks like a stand-alone but isn't.) I will definitely be on board for book 2. show less

Okay, I shouldn’t have to say this, but: Beyond this point are MAJOR spoilers for the first two books in The Strain Trilogy. If you haven’t read the first two books, you should click on the link in the last sentence.

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On with the show.

The Strain series started off great. In the first book, the authors recreate the classic Dracula scene with the death ship Demeter, but in this century, its a Boeing 777 dead on the tarmac, and show more naturally we nowadays are less concerned about a plague than about terrorists. The build up in the first two books as Ephraim Goodweather and Nora Jones of the CDC, the Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian, the exterminator Vasily Fet, and others slowly learn the scope of what they are facing, and just how insurmountable their odds are, is great. You grow to love these characters. And, in a change from most vampire books, you have no sympathetic feelings towards the monsters themselves (making the vampires overlarge human ticks who shit while they eat certainly helps forestall any tender feelings).

So bring on the final installment! We come in two years after the events of The Fall. The Master has brought nuclear winter down upon the earth, humans have been herded into blood camps or forced to work to support the continuation of the series. The vampires have won.

And Ephraim is lost. We find Eph, now basically a drug addict hobo, spending a night in his ex-wife’s old house, feeling depressed about not knowing where his son, Zack, is (let’s remember that Kelly, the ex-wife in question and vampire, kidnapped Zack in the last book). Little does he know that Zack is being groomed by the Master to be his new vessel. Meanwhile, Nora, Fet, and a few others are trying to continue to fight. That is, when they’re not being screwed over by Eph’s unreliability.

So basically, the human race has lost. Setrakian is dead, Ephraim Goodweather is falling apart, Nora, Fet, and the others are left to try to pick up the pieces of the revolution as best they can, but things look grim. Only a really, really, REALLY desperate final plan has a chance to destroy The Master and save the human race.

So far I’m enjoying this. I always like a post apocalyptic spin, and Ephraim Goodweather’s fall from grace is a logical progression of his flawed character. I also like how the other characters continue to grow in the third installment. After all, this series is really about family (Seriously, forget about the vampires, everything everyone does in this book ties back to their family in some way). Even the vampires with their “dear ones” fall into the family theme.

At some point, however, the book goes off the rails. The action is gripping, the suspense nail-biting at times, the ick factor is still present, but as the group seeks out the origins of The Master in order to destroy it, the plot up and takes itself way off the reservation. I like to keep my reviews as spoiler free as possible, so I’m trying to decide on the best way to describe this without giving anything away. Suffice it to say this: that apparently having vampirism as a disease or literal wormy parasite is no longer cool or creepy enough. When we learn where The Master comes from, the authors threw in a huge curveball, and I, for one, was unimpressed. I found it way better when the explanation was “nature is a fucked up bitch sometimes.” The thought that there didn’t need to be an origin story, that this horrible thing arose from some primordial soup and was hurled against us by the forces of nature we’d prefer to ignore, THAT was scary. Because something like that could happen. By taking things where they did, the authors lessened the visceral fear that some monster plague (figurative) could come sweeping out of the sky in the form of a Boeing 777 and presage the end of the human race.

Ah well. In all, if you read the first two books of the series, you should still read this one, if only to complete the trilogy. But I’d lay odds that you’re going to come away a bit disappointed. There were a lot of good things in this book, but the origin story they ultimately came up with for The Master is disappointing enough that it more or less overshadows everything else in the book. If you haven’t read the series, and are reading this review anyway (shame on you), don’t let this review stop you from picking up the first two books in the series. They’re some of the best vampire fiction to come out in the past few years (no one sparkles, bonus!). show less

A horrific virus has been unleashed in New York, creating savage vampires that hunt indiscriminately. Civilization has pretty much crumbled, leaving anarchy in the vampires' wake. There is only a small group of people that oppose these powerful creatures, including former CDC employee Ephraim Goodweather and his son, elderly Abraham Setrakian, Nora Martinez, and exterminator Vasiliy Fet. They are the only thing in between the strigoi and total human annihilation. The story continues just show more after the group failed to destroy the Master, the powerful vampire behind the epidemic. Setrakian hopes to obtain a book from the 17th century that could give him the key to destroying all the vampires, but every time this book has surfaced, disaster has followed, and it costs millions of dollars. To make things worse, Eldritch Palmer, a very rich and sickly man, is giving the Master his full support and Ephraim's ex-wife turned vampire is stalking the small group of heroes to turn her loved ones. Through all these obstacles, can Ephraim and his hodgepodge group save the human race?

Usually, the second book of a trilogy drags and falls flat, simply succeeding in setting up the characters for the grand finale. The Fall is not the typical second book. It is just as compelling as the first book, but very bleak. The vampires Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan created aren't your standard tall, dark, handsome, or sparkling types that have become popular in recent years. They are disgusting and their only interest in humans is for food and transmitting the virus so it will spread as far as possible. This view of vampires is refreshing since there are so few truly dangerous vampire stories out there. I like that the physiological changes from human to vampire are described in detail. It lends a sense of realism to a usually fantastical creature.

There are a few new things in this novel that I found particularly interesting and made the novel compelling. The first is the concept that human love is corrupted and changed in the conversion from human to vampire, leading the new vampire to infect their loved ones with the virus. It makes the epidemic all that more devastating that even love isn't safe from these brutal vampires. This theme recurs throughout the novel and proves to be toxic to the protagonists. Vampire children are introduced when children blinded by the eclipse are kidnapped and turned to be troops that don't rely on eyesight to fight the enemy. These creatures are incredibly disturbing and difficult for the humans to deal with since they still appear to be children. Another new addition is the small group of original ancient vampires that oppose the Master because they view vampirism as a great gift to be given with discretion to only the most deserving. They gather and fund a small army of gang members and other random people to join the fight against the Master. It makes sense that vampires wouldn't want to overtake humans because their food source would be extremely depleted and a situation like in the film Daybreakers may ensue. In that group of fighters is an interesting character named Angel, who is a retired wrestler. He goes from an old, washed up has-been to a fierce fighter again. He experiences a kind of rebirth. His interesting past and drive to fight despite his age made him my favorite new character.

The Strain Trilogy brings vampires from the romance genre they've settled in back to their true horror roots. The Fall is a worthy follow-up to The Strain. This series is addictive and I seriously can't wait for the final installment, Eternal Night, to come out. show less

A novelization... normally, I would shy away from a book like this, but somehow I didn't realize that's what it was until I had started reading it, and by then I was enjoying it so much, I didn't care! I love the film, and this book was very true to the plot of the movie, while also adding backstory that wasn't in the movie, but that adds to the richness of the story itself. This is the perfect kind of story for me: whimsical, fairy tale-like, but with just enough horror to remind you that show more it's not a children's story. show less