Book Review: The Strain, by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo Del Toro

The Strain could very easily be subtitled “How Vampires Learned to Stop Sparkling and Be Kind of Cool Again.”  It shouldn’t, because that’s the titular equivalent of a seven car pile-up, but I think that sentence sums up The Strain in a succinct if awkward manner.

The Strain, just released in paperback, is the first book in a trilogy, penned by director-extraordinaire Guillermo Del Toro, and a man with possibly the greatest first and last name combination in the history of published fiction:  Chuck Hogan.  Aside from being an 80′s facial hair appellative explosion, Chuck Hogan is a name you should pay attention to.  His work has been adapted into a forthcoming feature film called The Town written and directed by Ben Affleck (Please hold all eye-rolls and groans until after you’ve seen Gone Baby Gone. Spoiler alert–it’s a great movie that Affleck directed).  I digress.

Quick plot set-up– a plane lands at JFK.  All systems shut down within moments of touchdown.  Safety personnel react as they are paid to do.  The plane is opened, and every single person on board is dead, without a mark on them.  Then things get worse.  Also, awesome.  I won’t give away any more, but that set-up alone had me hooked.

I plowed through this book in a couple of days.  It gets its teeth (pun not intended, really) into you quickly and keeps a white-knuckle pace right through until the end.  If you are looking for a completely solid summer read, you can do a lot worse.  It’s suspenseful, highly original, and puts a great new twist on the vampire legend.

It’s far from perfect, however.  It’s a boys show, no surprise there.  There’s only one interesting female character in the book–the main character’s ex-wife–his romantic interest/co-worker is an empty shell of a character.  She really just fills up space. The rest of the cast is solid.  The aforementioned main character is Dr Eph Goodweather, a CDC doctor, then his son Zack, a NYC exterminator named Vasily Fet, a con named Gus and the ever-present Abraham Van Helsing role is filled by Professor Abraham Setrakian.  Heavy-handed, I know.  Setrakian is the most interesting character of the bunch, unsurprisingly.  The flashbacks that flesh out his past are some of the stronger points in the novel.  The way he threads himself into the different plot lines is also noteworthy.

That actually brings me to my other major complaint.  The book has some very interesting new takes on the vampire legend, the details of which I will gloss over.  This is good, great even.  However, at the same time, however, it sticks to so many of the stereotypical aspects of the legend.  The idea of the ‘vampire world’ that exists beneath, around and above the human world is really kind of staid at this point.  I found it actually clashed with the direction the story and the vampires therein seemed to be growing in from the get-go.  It works, in the long run, but as a veteran to vampire fiction, I was a little put off by the sudden swerve back onto more well-trodden ground after the book so successfully painted the monsters in a new and interesting light.

Summation:  The writing is solid if completely unremarkable.  The characters are believable enough, and their reactions to the unbelievable situations they face were well-handled as well.  A somewhat-new twist on the nature of the vampire and an exciting plot lend The Strain to being a solid and entertaining read.

The highest praise I can give it is that I will be back for the sequel, due out in October of 2010

Title: The Strain

Author(s): Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Publisher: Harper

Cost:  9.99 in paperback

Rating:  

A Few Descriptive Words: A creepy and entertaining summer read.