You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
emilybryk 's review for:
The Strain
by Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan
this is strangely hard to review . . . while it was genuinely creepy and full of bizarre, atmospheric set-pieces, the writing, um, blows. seriously.
on the upside, I was generally impressed with the horror of the familiar that's going on here. as the greater new york area is infected with vampirism, the small changes we see build tension aplenty, and the modifications the new vampires make (I'm thinking of the westchester basement, specifically) are exactly enough to be both interesting (how smart! the dog shed! those creative vampires!) and alarming (oh crap! the back shed! those vampires that will KILL ME WHEN I WALK THE DOG!). also, in a departure from current vampire trends (?!), the creepy vampire/zombie/plague vectors are alarming and suit my sense of what actually should be upsetting about vampires.
on the downside (aside from the general gore, because I'm a wimp), this wasn't actually a novel. yeah, it was bound up nicely and available in my library, but it wasn't a novel. it was a movie, or should have been. it's intensely visual (the subway tunnels! the dirty fingernails! the daughter returning home!), and the images overpower the rest of the book. characters (and pieces of equipment) arrive in the middle of scenes, with no indication where they came from. people use language they have no reason to know (or at least to be facile with). metaphors are overabundant and sometimes questionable. these are all things that would be either corrected or unnoticeable in movie form, but in a book? that kind of crap doesn't fly.
also, lose the peeing vampires. seriously.
on the upside, I was generally impressed with the horror of the familiar that's going on here. as the greater new york area is infected with vampirism, the small changes we see build tension aplenty, and the modifications the new vampires make (I'm thinking of the westchester basement, specifically) are exactly enough to be both interesting (how smart! the dog shed! those creative vampires!) and alarming (oh crap! the back shed! those vampires that will KILL ME WHEN I WALK THE DOG!). also, in a departure from current vampire trends (?!), the creepy vampire/zombie/plague vectors are alarming and suit my sense of what actually should be upsetting about vampires.
on the downside (aside from the general gore, because I'm a wimp), this wasn't actually a novel. yeah, it was bound up nicely and available in my library, but it wasn't a novel. it was a movie, or should have been. it's intensely visual (the subway tunnels! the dirty fingernails! the daughter returning home!), and the images overpower the rest of the book. characters (and pieces of equipment) arrive in the middle of scenes, with no indication where they came from. people use language they have no reason to know (or at least to be facile with). metaphors are overabundant and sometimes questionable. these are all things that would be either corrected or unnoticeable in movie form, but in a book? that kind of crap doesn't fly.
also, lose the peeing vampires. seriously.