Helpful Score: 6
Warning: If you have been referred to The Strain because you are a Twilight fan, this is not the book for you. The baddies in this novel would eat Edward Cullen for lunch, and then take on the rest of the family for seconds.
That said, I was excited to read The Strain because it has everything I love in a novel: vampires, a superbug-esque plague and an impending apocalypse. What a winning combination! The result is a book that is one part CSI, one part Stephen King's Salem's Lot and a little bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers thrown in for good measure.
The story begins when a 777 aircraft lands at JFK International Airport with all of its passengers dead, and all its electronic and communications equipment seemingly dead, too. The CDC quickly dispatches its Canary Project team, a crew of expert epidemiologists trained to deal with the most lethal and contagious unknown viruses and other health threats. The story's leading man, Eph, is the leading scientist in the study of the spread of disease, but what he finds on the aircraft stumps him. He is soon caught up in a global threat he never imagined, and a plague that he has no idea how to contain. Led by an elderly concentration camp survivor (who just happens to be a vampire hunter, and who has been tracking the book's Big Bad for 60 years across the globe), Eph and a ragtag group of survivors from all walks of life team up to try to save New York City from the spreading disease of the undead.
I loved the authors' comparison of vampires to viruses -- and rats, for that matter. There is a lot of new ground covered in The Strain, and I appreciated the wealth of scientific research that the authors use to build the story. Anyone who enjoys Michael Crichton, Robin Cook or other medical thriller authors will appreciate this new approach to horror, but beware: there is quite a bit of gore in this novel. One of the authors was the director/creator of Blade 2, and both of the Hellboy movies, so the descriptions of the horror are vivid and at times, cringe-worthy -- even for the most resolute of horror fans. I've moved away from reading the genre much in recent years, but I did enjoy this -- maybe as a result of the merging of science and the supernatural.
The Strain is the first in a trilogy of books, with the next installments due out in 2010 and 2011. I will be looking forward to those releases -- especially in light of the monster, unresolved cliffhanger ending dished out at the end of this book. [close]
That said, I was excited to read The Strain because it has everything I love in a novel: vampires, a superbug-esque plague and an impending apocalypse. What a winning combination! The result is a book that is one part CSI, one part Stephen King's Salem's Lot and a little bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers thrown in for good measure.
The story begins when a 777 aircraft lands at JFK International Airport with all of its passengers dead, and all its electronic and communications equipment seemingly dead, too. The CDC quickly dispatches its Canary Project team, a crew of expert epidemiologists trained to deal with the most lethal and contagious unknown viruses and other health threats. The story's leading man, Eph, is the leading scientist in the study of the spread of disease, but what he finds on the aircraft stumps him. He is soon caught up in a global threat he never imagined, and a plague that he has no idea how to contain. Led by an elderly concentration camp survivor (who just happens to be a vampire hunter, and who has been tracking the book's Big Bad for 60 years across the globe), Eph and a ragtag group of survivors from all walks of life team up to try to save New York City from the spreading disease of the undead.
I loved the authors' comparison of vampires to viruses -- and rats, for that matter. There is a lot of new ground covered in The Strain, and I appreciated the wealth of scientific research that the authors use to build the story. Anyone who enjoys Michael Crichton, Robin Cook or other medical thriller authors will appreciate this new approach to horror, but beware: there is quite a bit of gore in this novel. One of the authors was the director/creator of Blade 2, and both of the Hellboy movies, so the descriptions of the horror are vivid and at times, cringe-worthy -- even for the most resolute of horror fans. I've moved away from reading the genre much in recent years, but I did enjoy this -- maybe as a result of the merging of science and the supernatural.
The Strain is the first in a trilogy of books, with the next installments due out in 2010 and 2011. I will be looking forward to those releases -- especially in light of the monster, unresolved cliffhanger ending dished out at the end of this book. [close]
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