Book Review - The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Synopsis:  They have always been here. Vampires. In secret and in darkness. Waiting. Now their time has come. In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country. In two months—the world.

A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold.

In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing . . .

So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city—a city that includes his wife and son—before it is too late.

First Line:  " "Once upon a time," said Abraham Setrakian's grandmother, "there was a giant." "

Random Quote:  "At the far end of the hold lay a long, rectangular box, block, wooden, and heavy looking, like a grand cabinet laid out on its back.  Unvarnished ebony, eight or so feet long by four feet wide by three high.  Taller than a refrigerator.  The top side was edged all around with intricate carving, labyrinthine flourishes accompanied by lettering in an ancient or perhaps made-to-look-ancient language.  Many of the swirls resembled figures, flowing human figures - and perhaps, with a little imagination, faces screaming."

Review:  Think 'salem's Lot and I Am Legend meet The Hot Zone and you've got the basics of this book.  At a time when vampires and werewolves have been sanitized beyond all recognition by a bevy of romance writers, it's good to read a vampire book with real vampires.  You know, real vampires, the predatory kind who don't date high school girls because they're too busy EATING THEM.

It all starts with a plane stopped literally dead on the tarmac and within days all of Manhattan is infested.  There's a great team of vampire hunters here, each with his or her own mildly outlandish backstory.  There are corpses aplenty - crawling with parasitic worms and growing their very own sucker that pops out of the neck when it's feeding time.  There are ancient vampires who divided up the Old and New World and the renegade who has broken their agreement.  There's a coffin full of earth and the rats are leaving the subways.

The first in a promised trilogy, it was creepy and gross and I loved every minute of it.

Reading Challenges:  Thriller & Suspense Reading Challenge 2010, 2010 100+ Reading Challenge, 2010 Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge

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