First Impressions: The Strain

When it first arrived as a book back in 2009, I was pretty intrigued, and incredibly lucky.  I actually came across the novel The Strain in my local grocery story while doing my weekly shopping.  Even through I tend to be pretty good about keeping track of the various authors I enjoy reading, sometimes things fall through the cracks and if I hadn't have been interested in the bin of books I probably wouldn't have come across the title for months after the fact.

The original book was pretty great - having read a lot of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories, I'm pretty familiar with the tropes, but The Strain almost immediately goes its own way, the story works as a medical thriller, a supernatural thriller, and a monster book all at once, and the entire trilogy (followed by The Fall in 2010 and The Night Eternal in 2011) is well worth the read.

Yesterday, FX premiered the new television series, The Strain, and it was pretty amazing; I watched it with my wife and youngest daughter (aged 17) and the entire story built up a nice level of suspense throughout and then really just went for the jugular.  If you haven't seen it yet, give it a try - the story is intense, but with good casting and a great sense of theatre, I had a a lot of fun watching it.

A quick side note - my daughter, who normally enjoys a lot of horror-themed stories, decided to leave the room ten minutes before the end of the episode as it simply got a little too intense for her (also more than a little graphic), so it may not be fore the faint of heart, or even people who normally enjoy scary movies - I have it admit it definitely got my heart racing.

Looking forward to episode two next week.

Book Review: The Fall

A little over a year ago I reviewed the Guillermo Del Toro / Chuck Hogan novel The Strain. It followed the beginnings of a modern-day vampire apocalypse through the eyes of two doctors, a child, a pest exterminator and a vampire slayer. Last week I finished reading the Sequel, The Fall.

First off - this book was really good, it moved up the pace of the first book and basically follows the first three weeks of the outbreak from the centre, New York City. We are still following the same characters from the first novel and as the set up already occurred in the first novel, the book jumps right into the thrills of the story.

My only issues with the book come from its placement as the second in a trilogy - basically you know everything is going to go bad, because that is how the second story in a trilogy works. Other than that, the novel was a lot of fun and has me definitely looking forward to the last book in the series The Night Eternal.

Book Reviews: The Strain

Before I give my review of The Strain, you should know two of the things in horror that make me happy: 1) Guillermo Del Toro, and 2)Post-Apocalyptic settings. Sure there are lots of other things in horror that make me happy, but when you add this specific film-maker to my favourite horror sub-genre, I am going to get very, very excited.

Guillermo Del Toro (pictured to the right), for those of you who don't know, is the director of the Hellboy films, Pan's Labyrinth, Blade II (basically a remake of his own superior film Mimic), and one of my favourite ghost movies ever, The Devil's Backbone. His movies are bizarre, magical, and (to me at least) quite thought provoking.

Post Apocalyptic fiction is my personal favourite sub-section of horror; forget trying to escape serial killers, monsters, and ghosts, what would you do when the whole world gets f**ked up beyond repair? From the great ones (Swan Song, The Stand, Earth Abides) to the laughably cheesy ones (Night of the Comet), to the televised ones (Jericho, Jeremiah) this genre is my personal favourite and don't be surprised if I do a top ten list of both post-apocalyptic movies and books on it in the future.

Now, when I found out that these two great flavours of horror were going to be paired up in not one book, but a new horror trilogy I was ecstatic! To be honest though, even though I pride myself on keeping track of these types of books and movies, this one slipped under my radar, and I ended up noticing it at first in the book section of my local grocery store.

I read the book in just over two days and here (with as few spoilers as possible) is what I thought.

Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

If you like Horror, or Vampires, or Guillermo Del Toro, or action-packed reads, this book is definitely for you. Like a great disaster novel or film, it is structured in a way that you have an ensemble of main characters to invest in, and a race against time (even though you know they can't totally win - the book is the first part of a trilogy after all). The villains are great, every chapter ends with a mini-cliff hanger, and I finished the book desperately wanting the next one (May 2010).

I tend to judge books on two criteria, so let's check it out:

1) Would I read this book again? - yes, definitely yes.

2) Would I recommend this book to a friend? - yes, that's what I'm hoping to be doing with this review.

Looks like The Strain is a definite winner for me. But hey, let me know what you think.

I'll be doing a weekly review on great genre books I've found, alternating between classics and new stuff - feel free to send any suggestions my way!