The Strain - Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan [Review]

Title: The Strain

Author: Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan

Genre: Suspense, science fiction, supernatural

Publisher: William Morrow

Publishing date: June 2nd 2009

Pages: 403 

Rating

★★★★✩

Hello everyone! Halloween is around the corner, so I though it would be a good idea to review a book darker than the usual things I read, that’s why I chose The Strain, it has some elements of horror.

            The strain starts telling us a particular story about Jusef Sardu, a Polish nobleman who

Poster of the series.

suffered from gigantism, and was brought to Romania by his father on an expedition to hunt wolves. The entire hunting party mysteriously died or disappeared, except for Sardu, who returned to his family home in Poland but was rarely seen by the townspeople; and he eventually became the village bogeyman. This little story is important to the whole plot, after that the real story begins, now we are settled in New York several years later, 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. Ephraim "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. There is some kind of virus transforming people into “vampires”, during his research he will team up with his colleague and former lover, Nora; a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham; and a plague exterminator, Vasily Fet to save the city.

            I must say that I loved how the book started; the story about Sardu had a magical and mysterious feeling, and got me hooked since the first page. When that story finishes the book loses this magical feeling, but now it’s mystery what wraps up the story. The Boeing 777 part is a tribute to Dracula by Bram Stoker; in that book it was a ship that was found in the same state.

The Strain Vampires.

            I really liked how the authors explained vampirism, is a different approach of what I was used to, I’ve always seen it as something more paranormal and unexplained, sometimes related to the devil and demons. In this book vampirism is some kind of contagious virus with a somehow realistic scientific explanation.

            The beginning of the book is kind of slow, but it’s always surrounded by mystery and suspense, the plot follows different points of view, not only the one of the protagonist, which makes the story more interesting, because there are a lot of things happening simultaneously in the city. Those points of view are not only of the main characters, there are some random people related to the virus whose story we get to know.

            Despite the story being pretty interesting, the characters are not. I couldn’t develop any feelings towards them, I felt they were plain and had no personality at all, maybe the exterminator and Abraham are the ones I liked the most, but they didn’t convince me at all, if all they died I couldn’t care less… I hope there is character development in the second installment.

Vampires in the series. 

            I really liked this book’s vampires, they are not the typical elegant and beautiful creatures, they are really grotesque, and they are monsters, intelligent monsters.

            The strain is a good introductory book, with a mysterious and full of suspense atmosphere, and with an interesting approach to vampirism, showing us a type of vampires with creepy and horrible looks. It’s a good book, interesting and easy to read.