Would you like Twilight a little bit more if Edward's head flipped back like a Pez dispenser and he ate Bella right in the middle of the classroom, two chapters into the first - and therefore only - book? Not to mention every boyfriend or significant other in the span of the past few years would not have to endure either reading or sitting through another Twilight related event.
If your answer was a resounding "Yes!" or you are the poor, aforementioned significant other then Chuck Hogan and Guillermo Del Toro's "The Strain" would be the read for you.
Though the majority of the novel is set in The Big Apple, the first chapter throws readers into the world of a young man on the very edge of a rapidly modernizing age, pre-World War II. This is where we are introduced to the story of Jusef Sardu, an ill-fated blue blood who becomes cursed.
Wait, let me guess what you're thinking... "cursed to walk the night and feed on human blood!" You might even be speaking in a thick, clumsy, Transylvania, Boris Karloff inspired accent. For the most part, yes, you'd be right... but these vampires don't look much like Mr. Karloff and they definitely don't sound like him. Not to mention that they don't much care specifically for the blood of whiny, teen virgins who care for British film stars turned sparkling vampires.
The novel takes an interesting romp through the lives of several New Yorkers who ultimately all become embroiled in the fight against what soon becomes a vampire plague (yes, think Night of the Living Dead, but with vampires) after a inbound 747 passenger liner stalls on the tarmac at the JFK airport. Ephraim Goodweather and Nora Martinez, disgraced CDC scientists, Vasily Fet, a vermin exterminator and Professor Abraham Setrakian - a Holocaust survivor turned vampire hunter - soon become the focus characters of the story.
Del Toro's background in the macabre and ultimately gruesomely fascinating coupled with Hogan's ability to weave and interesting, dynamic plot make this novel nearly impossible to put down. From the scenes of trial and tribulation between characters and the fantastically horrific, this novel becomes - for all intents and purposes - a horror movie for the imagination, inked on paper instead of lit up on a screen.
If you're disappointed with what happened to vampires in the gap between Anne Rice and post- Stephanie Meyer, this is a book that has the potential to redeem the monster title for this creature of the night.
Personally, I give this book an 8 out of 10 if for nothing else but the vivid imagery, nearly seamless plot line and the attempt to bring the vampire back into the genre of horror and not teen angst.
What I didn't quite like about the novel was the up and down tendencies of the action. Hills and valleys; if you can get through the first three chapters, the book only gets better.
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