I’ll just start by saying that what follows includes a boatload of spoilers. In considering this book, however, I can’t think of a way in which to review it that doesn’t include spoilers, so there you are. Well, OK, if you just want a semi-objective, though not terribly useful, device by which to judge the book, I’ll give you my rating right now…

3/5 - Might be worth a try...

So now, for those who don’t care about spoilers, let’s get into the heart of the matter. I find the 3 unicorn rating of NR similar to the 3 stars employed by Roger Ebert. Ebert has said that the 3 star review is the least useful because it can mean so many things. People, however, tend to like things quantified, and so there you get a rating that doesn’t really tell one much about the book/film/comic at hand.

That said, The Strain is written by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo Del Toro.

I’ve never read anything by Hogan, though I’m tangentially familiar with his work, but Del Toro is one of my favorite filmmakers, and Pan’s Labyrinth is, with no hyperbole, one of the best fantasy films ever made. So, I was at least excited about the prospect of reading this book.

Spoiler 1: It’s about vampires.

That’s not much of a spoiler since the back of the book says something like…”Vampires. They’ve always been here, living in secret.” Or some such.

Spoiler 2: Vampires invade Manhattan.

Well, one “Master” vampire travels over from Europe and starts by infecting a plane load of passengers…

Spoiler 3: Vampirism is a virus.

I say, “infected” because, if the title didn’t give it away, in this telling of vampires, they operate by transmitting a virus from themselves to human hosts via something the protagonists call “blood worms.” The virus, in a fairly interesting take on it, actually changes the nature of the infected host and eventually does away with the human vital organs and changes the body into nothing more than a series of chambers set up to drink human blood. Plus, once infected the new vampire grows a stinger like appendage that shoots out of the vampires mouth and it what is used to drink the blood of humans/turn new vampires.

Spoiler 4: Anyone who is “bitten” turns.

Whether or not one dies from the “bite,” he/she will wake on the next nightfall and be a vampire.

All these spoilers are important in that the nature of the vampires plays directly into the expertise of the protagonist, Ephraim Goodweather, a special epidemiologist with the CDC who deals in terrorist attacks and high level viral outbreaks.

Of course, Eph isn’t the only one trying to hunt down the rogue “master” vampire and, in fact, is recruited by Setrakian, a concentration camp survivor and interesting homage to Van Helsing. Late in the book (too late for my taste) a third “hunter” joins the party in the form of Vasily Fet, a NYC rat catcher with a unique skill set as pertains to the underground warrens of NY and how to infiltrate and destroy vermin.

The big problem with the book, for me, is that I did not realize until, oh about 20 pages from the end, that it was just the first installment of a trilogy. I was reading it as a story that would be concluded when the book was done and, as such, had made a number of judgments regarding the narrative along the way; they spent too much time investigating the plane, Setrakian took too long to act, why didn’t Vasily show up sooner, etc.

All of these, of course, can be answered with a simple “this was only 1/3 of the story.”

Lastly, I’ll say that this book didn’t scare me.

OK, so only two books have ever actually scared me: Demons by John Shirley and Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson. I did have hopes, being as this is Guillermo Del Toro we’re talking about, that this one would have been the third.

As vampire stories go, it isn’t bad. The quick gestation period of the newly infected adds an element of impending doom that you don’t quite get in other vampire tales…as extrapolating out the number over just a few nights has nearly all of the burrough of Bronx infected. Lastly, newly infected vampires have an overwhelming urge to go and bite their “dear ones,” those people that they loved in life, which makes the infection particularly insidious and many of the bits of the first book are people being confronted by their newly vampiric loved ones.