Review Day!

(The title of this entry is a link to an enlightening interview with Guillermo del Toro)

In lieu of not being able to hit the crack store (Velocity Comics shop) and pick up my crack (comic books), I will be unable to do my usual flashy imagetastic review of comics today. (Of course, come the first week of August there will be an extra long post about comic books)

Instead, I'll share a review of the novel I just finished, Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's "The Strain."

This is a great read. I won't lie to you, the beginning is introduces a lot of characters and a lot of back story really quickly so to all you skimmers, "why the hell are you reading in the first place?" Seriously though, the book starts out strong, with a grandmother's ghost story followed by an unexplainable airport disaster on the day of a lunar (or is it solar?) eclipse, more appropriately called an "occultation."

Done in the style of those slice of life type movies where you see many characters whose paths may or may not cross at some point in the duration, the protagonists are many and compelling. An old man with a strong sense of duty, an alcoholic father out to do the right thing, a Mexican youth with nothing left to lose, a woman in love trying to come to terms with disaster, a young boy whose life has been stolen from him, a burly Russian exterminator... just to name my favorites.

The story is pretty fast-paced considering the span of the novel is only a few days and this is only one part of a trilogy. The plot lulls a bit in the late middle. That is to say not that the story is unimportant, but that so much is going on at this point that not a lot of action is getting resolved, but the story is being fleshed out. It is also interrupted by about four interludes into the past, where a young holocaust concentration camp prisoner encounters a vampire for the first time. Oh yeah, did I mention the book is about vampires?

Fuck all that Ann Rice/Twilight/vampires-should-look-like-Tom-Cruise bullshit. This is a scary, suspenseful and damn near tragic story about fast, strong, and cunning vampires with unique abilities and habits unlike any vampires you're used to reading about. I loved every second of the vampire mythos, the nature of their "clans," and the biology being explained in the story. I also loved del Toro's "homage" to the sexy, tempting vampire image.

In the course of a few nights, vampires have essentially declared war on the human race that doesn't even know they exsist. Aided by an unknown benefactor, the Master of these vampires quickly spreads his disease through New York and God knows where else.

Not to say the book is all fluff and no substance. The emotional content is there and there are lots of themes touched on such as racism in America today, the psychology behind terrorist response tactics, the psychology of men and women in distress and what to do when you discover your life has meaning and purpose. Not to mention the astonishing amount of research done prior to writing this book that enlightens the reader about a great many things such as astronomy, medicine, biology, pest control, airline protocol, and a bit of WWII history.

If you have the time, I recommend this read because once you're in it you'll be scared to death. The unsettling nature of these vampires combined with good storytelling and plenty of "huh, I didn't know that" moments should keep a reader entertained throughout. I give it my 9/10.

A screenshot of Guillermo del Toro's thoughts on vampires and his trilogy.