The Strain

The Strain (Book One of The Strain Trilogy) by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061558230
ISBN-13: 978-0061558238

This is the perfect horror read - action, mystery, thrills ... and vampires! And I'm not talking about the Twilight kind of vampires - I'm talking the blood and gore vampires of old legends. (This doesn't mean I don't like Twilight, because I do - these are just 2 entirely different kinds of vampire books). I have been a fan of Del Toro since Pan's Labyrinth, so this was a big selling point for me - along with the evil vampires.

Ephraim Goodweather, epidemiologist for the CDC is called away from a weekend with his son to examine a plane which landed at JFK in New York, but suddenly went dark upon landing. It appears that a mysterious illness has killed almost all of the passengers on Flight 753 and his investigation revolves around identifying the illness, finding a cause and eventually a cure.

Guillermo and Hogan have given us an entirely new species of vampires and believe me, these are not vegetarian vampires. It's really hard to give a synopsis of this book without giving away major spoilers, but this book is full of dead bodies that refuse to decompose, victims with white blood, an huge black earth-filled coffin, and mass chaos raining down on the Big Apple.

I usually do the biggest portion of my reading late at night, but this is one book I could not read before bed - I tried the first night and had nightmares. I quit sleeping with the light on years ago, but I've had to dig out my old nightlight to chase away the demons.

This is an excellent read, just in time for summer beach reading - yeah, sunlit beaches would probably be the perfect place to read. No need to worry about vamps in the sunshine. I am eagerly awaiting the release of the next book in the trilogy.