Helpful Score: 1
I actually started reading this book at night while traveling on an airplane and had to put it down after the first few chapters because it gave me a case of the willies. The story begins with the discovery of a plane which had landed at JFK with all aboard dead, not something that I wanted to be reading up in the air. After I got home and picked it up again, the willies disappeared and disappointment set in.
The Strain has its moments, but if you've read any vampire novels at all, you've read this book. Not only are there replays of several vampire books (especially Matheson's I Am Legend, but also They Thirst by McCammon, Salem's Lot by Stephen King, Brian Lumley's fabulous Necroscope and more) but if you've read any of the Repairman Jack series or the Adversary cycle of F. Paul Wilson (especially elements of The Keep), you will recognize basic character and plot elements in the story. In short, this has all been done before, which is very sad, because basically reading a rerun tended to make the book much less suspenseful, and I have to say that I accurately predicted the end which most likely leads to the action in book two. I haven't really had a good horror novel in my hands lately, and had been hoping to allow myself a good scare, but alas, it was not to be with this book. I really wanted to like it, but I did not.
However, as noted above, the overall rating everywhere seems to be a 4/5, so maybe I'm just more demanding in what I'm searching for in a horror novel. I'd recommend it to readers of vampire horror fiction, with the caveat that if you've read some of the best books in the genre, be prepared for a rehash mishmash.
The Strain has its moments, but if you've read any vampire novels at all, you've read this book. Not only are there replays of several vampire books (especially Matheson's I Am Legend, but also They Thirst by McCammon, Salem's Lot by Stephen King, Brian Lumley's fabulous Necroscope and more) but if you've read any of the Repairman Jack series or the Adversary cycle of F. Paul Wilson (especially elements of The Keep), you will recognize basic character and plot elements in the story. In short, this has all been done before, which is very sad, because basically reading a rerun tended to make the book much less suspenseful, and I have to say that I accurately predicted the end which most likely leads to the action in book two. I haven't really had a good horror novel in my hands lately, and had been hoping to allow myself a good scare, but alas, it was not to be with this book. I really wanted to like it, but I did not.
However, as noted above, the overall rating everywhere seems to be a 4/5, so maybe I'm just more demanding in what I'm searching for in a horror novel. I'd recommend it to readers of vampire horror fiction, with the caveat that if you've read some of the best books in the genre, be prepared for a rehash mishmash.
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