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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
I watched the show and thought the books would fill in some of the gaps.... UGH!!! Eph was so boring!!
What if vampires were real, ancient, and spread their vampirism like a virus? That's the central premise of The Strain, and I was on board from the first page. Ultimately, it was a disappointment for me, and I won't be reading the other books in the trilogy.
This book starts out with so much promise. It's a taught, intense, compelling thriller that gradually introduces compelling characters that it's easy to care about.
Then, in its middle third, it starts to wobble a little bit. The characters start doing things that don't make sense based on what we know about them, but because the slightly-too-convenient plot demands it. There were still enough interesting bits to keep me reading, but just past the halfway mark, I started to lose interest.
In the final third, it completely collapses under the weight of lazy, hacky writing that moves from one set piece to the next, sloppily throwing in brief and unsatisfying character moments as an afterthought.
So I'm of two minds on this: one, everything I stated above. The other, maybe I could have just suspended my disbelief and enjoyed the ride (which, I suspect, a lot of readers are able to do).
Strangely, I expect that a lot of what didn't work for me in this book will actually play out fairly well on the television series that starts in July, and I'm interested to see how they will handle it.
This book starts out with so much promise. It's a taught, intense, compelling thriller that gradually introduces compelling characters that it's easy to care about.
Then, in its middle third, it starts to wobble a little bit. The characters start doing things that don't make sense based on what we know about them, but because the slightly-too-convenient plot demands it. There were still enough interesting bits to keep me reading, but just past the halfway mark, I started to lose interest.
In the final third, it completely collapses under the weight of lazy, hacky writing that moves from one set piece to the next, sloppily throwing in brief and unsatisfying character moments as an afterthought.
So I'm of two minds on this: one, everything I stated above. The other, maybe I could have just suspended my disbelief and enjoyed the ride (which, I suspect, a lot of readers are able to do).
Strangely, I expect that a lot of what didn't work for me in this book will actually play out fairly well on the television series that starts in July, and I'm interested to see how they will handle it.
Ah, it's the first of a trilogy. Which means it's not very good at its own book because the whole thing is set up. A lot of vignettes explaining how the vampire threat came to America are interesting individually but collectively they get in the way of investing the ostensible main characters in the situation. Also there's some really terrible prose in here at times.
There's not really enough here to suggest I should jump straight to the second book, so I'll let this one gestate for a while ... and get to it eventually.
There's not really enough here to suggest I should jump straight to the second book, so I'll let this one gestate for a while ... and get to it eventually.
This book lacks absolutely all the qualities one might expect from Guillermo Del Toro. Eerie atmospheres, vivid imagery, moments of fearful anticipation, and anything resembling good story-telling are all thrown out the window in favor of a mountain of clichés, a woefully obvious narrative, cardboard cut-out characters without a single believable thought or action, and 300 pages of exposition leading up to a sad excuse for a climax. Finished off with the fact that any moment which COULD HAVE conceivably been frightening was dulled down to laughter by the worst writing I've seen since Twilight, this is really not a book intelligent people should be paying 30 dollars for. If you want to read good, affective vampire-related horror, go read John Ajvide Lindqvist's "Let Me In" instead.
This was bubble gum vampires.
I really didn't like the first half of the book and almost stopped reading. However, the backstory of Setrakian kept me going. I fact, I could have totally read a novella about him and been extremely happy.
The second half of the book picks up enough to pull him up to a 3 star rating, but let it be known that I wanted to give this about 2.5 stars but decided to round up.
I really didn't like the first half of the book and almost stopped reading. However, the backstory of Setrakian kept me going. I fact, I could have totally read a novella about him and been extremely happy.
The second half of the book picks up enough to pull him up to a 3 star rating, but let it be known that I wanted to give this about 2.5 stars but decided to round up.
The first book that I can remember making me palpably anxious in some time, The Strain was a quick, fun read full of a building sense of suspense and urgency. I can't wait to pick up the other two books in the trilogy.
If the testament to a trilogy is how much the part one makes a person anxious to read the next installment, then The Strain fails big time.
Maybe it's having the Guillermo Del Toro name attached or that I bought a hardcover edition or that the initial concept and first 100 pages of a plane landing in New York with a slew of dead passengers by way of vampire was so intriguing that I had unrealistic expectations from the story. It's possible there's a combination of the three going on. Unfortunately, the story doesn't deliver. It feels padded and redundant for much of the middle section, constantly reemphasizing the logistics of how the vampires operate. Chuck Hogan, whom I suspect did most of the heavy lifting in the writing department, doesn't lay out action sequences very well in prose form here. That's a pretty important aspect of what amounts to an action-packed horror novel.
On the plus side, because the opening and first few chapters are so interesting, I flew through it. In the beginning it was because I wanted to know what happened next, but later on I wanted it to get back to the way it was in the beginning. Setrakian is the best character in the novel and the chapters that flashback to his beginnings were often better than most of the time spent in the present day. Perhaps the authors will devote more space to that in parts two and three, but I know if I do read those it won't be until they get published in paperback form.
I think what annoyed me the most is that having Del Toro's name attached made this book read (possibly subconsciously) like the extended treatment for a future film, or worse, a novelization. The larger ideas and big events in the novel feel very cinematic. The opening, for instance, is straight out of one of Del Toro's movies. And it would work great as an opening to a film. Much of this book would work better as a movie, really. As a book, it's just not there.
Maybe it's having the Guillermo Del Toro name attached or that I bought a hardcover edition or that the initial concept and first 100 pages of a plane landing in New York with a slew of dead passengers by way of vampire was so intriguing that I had unrealistic expectations from the story. It's possible there's a combination of the three going on. Unfortunately, the story doesn't deliver. It feels padded and redundant for much of the middle section, constantly reemphasizing the logistics of how the vampires operate. Chuck Hogan, whom I suspect did most of the heavy lifting in the writing department, doesn't lay out action sequences very well in prose form here. That's a pretty important aspect of what amounts to an action-packed horror novel.
On the plus side, because the opening and first few chapters are so interesting, I flew through it. In the beginning it was because I wanted to know what happened next, but later on I wanted it to get back to the way it was in the beginning. Setrakian is the best character in the novel and the chapters that flashback to his beginnings were often better than most of the time spent in the present day. Perhaps the authors will devote more space to that in parts two and three, but I know if I do read those it won't be until they get published in paperback form.
I think what annoyed me the most is that having Del Toro's name attached made this book read (possibly subconsciously) like the extended treatment for a future film, or worse, a novelization. The larger ideas and big events in the novel feel very cinematic. The opening, for instance, is straight out of one of Del Toro's movies. And it would work great as an opening to a film. Much of this book would work better as a movie, really. As a book, it's just not there.
Well, it started off with a bang - there was a great opening premise. But it slid downhill and became conventional and a little muddied. It clearly pulls from Stephen King but not in a good way. Let's put it this way: it wasn't awful, but it wasn't good, either.
Sigh... this book started out pretty good, but by the end I just really wanted it to be over. It is the story of a vampire plague which begins when an airplane lands in New York and pretty much everyone on board is dead. A large, mysterious box in the cargo hold, unexplained small incisions on the necks of all the bodies, and no blood anywhere? - You've got yourself a vampire invasion! There were some good "Nononono, don't open that door!" moments toward the beginning, but then it started to drag. There was one scene in a hospital where a man was being chased by a vampire and went to attack it with some kind of surgical instrument. The author actually stopped the narrative in the middle of a fight scene to explain what the surgical instrument was. It was so awkward and clunky, I almost stopped right there. Oh well - not my cup of tea.