Product Description

High-concept thriller with a supernatural edge from world-famous director, whose films include Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy. A plane lands at JFK and mysteriously 'goes dark', stopping in the middle of the runway for no apparent reason, all lights off, all doors sealed. The pilots cannot be raised. When the hatch above the wing finally clicks open, it soon becomes clear that everyone on board is dead -- although there is no sign of any trauma or struggle. Ephraim Goodweather and his team from the Center for Disease Control must work quickly to establish the cause of this strange ocurrence before panic spreads. The first thing they discover is that four of the victims are actually still alive. But that's the only good news. And when all two hundred corpses disappear from various morgues around the city on the same night, things very rapidly get worse. Soon Eph and a small band of helpers will find themselves battling to protect not only their own loved ones, but the whole city, against an ancient threat to humanity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16819 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 401 pages

Review
`The cross fertilsation between myth, science and fantasy makes The Strain a rattling piece of escapism....Suck it and see.'
--The Times

Review
Best known as an innovative film director, Mexican Guillermo Del Toro makes his first foray into literature alongside thriller writer Chuck Hogan with this entertaining mix of action blockbuster and vampire myth. With an obvious nod to bram stoker's Dracula, The Strain follows the story of a plane that lands in New York with nearly all passangers dead and a mysterious, earth filled coffin in the hold.
Whether it's the curious dual authorship or just a desire to set the scene accurately, the beginning of the story is a disappointingly sluggish mass of technical description. Thankfully, once The Strain is unleashed and a host of half-zombie, half-vampire creatures start laying waste to New York, the book shifts up a few gears, with Del Toro's talent for creating fantastical, macarbre characters shining through. As part of an intended triology, The Strain ends on a hesitant note but it's still an exciting page turner, perfect for those with a taste for the gruesome.

'The Strain takes a horror staple and gives it a modern patina'

From the Author
Q: Guillermo Del Toro, you’ve written screenplays and directed numerous movies, to name a few of your many accomplishments. What motivated you to write a novel?
GDT: Well, it’s a different challenge, but I’ve always written short stories and then, in my film work, storylines for movies (the storyline is a slightly “freer” form than screenplay writing). I have published some of my short stories in the past and it is my secret dream to write shivery tales for young readers. My favorite author in that sense is Roald Dahl who mixed it free-style between the grotesque and the magical. I love the short story form as a reader but if a novel has a terse structure I find it far more immersive and fulfilling. Nevertheless some of my favorite authors, Jorge Luis Borges, Horatio Quiroga, Saki, etc. are masters of the short story form. The novel grew out of appetite and scope.

Q: You are one of the most extraordinarily imaginative and creative thinkers working in the arts today. What were some of the influences that have contributed to your success? Do you have any kind of a muse?
GDT: Curiously enough I regularly draw more inspiration from painters and books than I do from other films. Painters like Carlos Schwabe, Odilon Redon, Félicien Rops, Arnold Bocklin, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Thomas Cole and many others, never fail to excite me, and in the book front there are just as many authors. . . Charles Dickens does the trick every time as does Oscar Wilde, Juan Rulfo, Horacio Quiroga, etc.

Q: Many of your movies have centered on fantastical characters. Why did you choose to write your first novel about vampires?
GDT: All of my life I’ve been fascinated by them but always from a Naturalist’s point of view. Cronos, my first movie, wanted to be a rephrasing of the genre—I love the rephrasing of an old myth. When I tackled Blade II, I approached it with a myriad of ideas about Vampire Biology but only a few of those made it into the film. Tonally, the movie needed to be an action film and some of the biological stuff was too disturbing already. . . I love the idea of the biological, the divine and the evolutionary angles to explain the origin and function of the Vampire genus. Some of my favorite books about Vampirism are treatises on Vampiric “fact,” books by Bernard J. Hurwood, Dom Augustin Calmet, Montague Summers, etc, etc.

Q: There are many stories, movies, and even a television show involving vampires. The Strain uses the idea that vampires are a plague, and that the lead hunter is a scientist from the Centers for Disease Control. What was your inspiration for this twist?
GDT: When I was a kid I loved The Night Stalker and I fell in love with the idea Matheson and Rice posited, of exploring a creature of such powerful stature through the point of view of a common worker, a man used to dealing with things in a procedural way. “Just another day at the job . . . ”

Q: How did you and Chuck Hogan come together to write The Strain? How does your collaboration work?
GDT: It was a true collaboration. I had created a “bible” for the book. It contained most of the structural ideas and characters and Chuck then took his pass on it and invented new characters and ideas. Fet (one of my favorite characters) was completely invented by him. And then I did my pass, writing new chapters or heavily editing his pass, and then he did a pass on my pass and so on and so forth. This is the way I have co-written in the past. I loved Chuck’s style and ideas from reading his books and I specifically wanted him as a partner because he had a strong sense of reality and had NEVER written a horror book. I knew we would complete each other in the creation of this book. What surprised me is that he came up with some gruesome moments all on his own! He revealed himself to be a rather disturbed man!

Q: Chuck Hogan, Stephen King hailed your novel Prince of Thieves as one of the ten best novels of 2005. What was that like getting such extraordinary praise from this esteemed cultural icon?
CH: The mere fact that Stephen King had read something I’d written really blew my mind. And then to find out that he liked it—that I’d gotten inside the head of the man who has been getting inside of all our heads for all these years—was a unique thrill, and a real morale boost. I wrote him a rambling thank you letter that probably got tossed in the “crazy fan” file—but for him to use his position to champion the work of other authors tells you everything you need to know.

Q: What most surprised you about working with Guillermo Del Toro? Has working with him impacted your own work? In your former career as a video store clerk, did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine working on a project like this—with a legend like Del Toro?
CH: I’d never co-authored anything, nor had I published a true work of horror before, and here I was embarking on an epic trilogy with a master of the genre. I probably should have been more intimidated—yet I felt an immediate kinship with the material, as well as true excitement at the challenge of bringing the story to life, both of which carried me through. Guillermo is a daunting first audience, and yet an incredibly generous collaborator. Not to mention an amazing resource: it’s just fun to have to ask him a question—say, about why the vampires run hot instead of cold—and know that, not only will he take me through their intricate biology, but he will embroider the account with corroborating examples from the field of entomology, marine life, and some arcane fact about the function of human blood platelets.

Q: Your previous novels, Prince of Thieves and The Killing Moon, probe the dark side of human nature. What draws you to this theme, and to the genre of suspense?
CH: Crime and horror are both genres of existentialism, and I am drawn to stories of man at his extremes, of people who find themselves tested, haunted, threatened. I believe a writer should challenge himself in his work just as he challenges the characters in his story—that anything less would be inauthentic and dishonest. What I love about The Strain is that the journey of the story takes this maxim and multiplies it by one thousand.

Q: The Strain is the first novel of a trilogy. Can you give us a hint of what’s to come?
GDT: The second novel is rather crepuscular—mankind loses its advantage and we see what the future holds for the Vampiric race while tracking the mythical origins of it all. We revisit familiar memories and learn more about Setrakian, and Gus leads us to an unexpected alliance. New York is under Martial Law and finding a way out of it becomes a major subplot. The third novel is absolutely enormous both in its implications and its reach. It rephrases Vampirism in a completely fresh way.

Q: Will we see The Strain on the big screen anytime soon?
GDT: No, not film—far too compressed a form . . . I believe it would be ideal to create a limited cable series out of it and not to extend it into a network run, where characters die only when the ratings do.

Customer Reviews

Mr. Leech Is Here
First released as Nocturna (La Trilogia De La Nocturna), The Strain begins with a grandmother telling her grandson a boogey-man type of story, in order to make him eat more. A decade later, they are fleeing from the Nazis, and something much worse than a boogey-man. A great start, not only because the grandmother's tale was interesting, but I was eager to find out how Abraham Setrakian (the boy from the beginning) fits into the story.

I have never read a more intense build-up in all my years. The different reactions of the characters when the Regis 777 blacks out on the taxiway, the bizarre details of what they find inside the plane -- all of it just sucked me in. I was surprised that a book with so little action in the first half could have me on the edge of my nerves.

The organization of the book in general, as well as the transitions between POVs, was incredibly well-done. Abraham's recollections, the explanation of "occultation" rather than "solar eclipse," and the off-handed zombie remarks brought me to the precipice of an apocalyptic nightmare descending upon the characters and the world as they know it:

(from The Strain) "His lower jaw descended and out wriggled something pink and fleshy that was not his tongue. It was longer, more muscular and complex...and squirming."

This is not another vampire tale; this is not a blood and gore trail of zombies. This is a horror story -- the first of a trilogy -- the way horror should be: mind-numbingly frightening. Pay attention, horror fans and authors, because Guillermo Del Toro (The Devouring) and Chuck Hogan (The Standoff) have just raised the standards for the genre.

Needs a good edit
There's nothing particularly new here, despite the claim that this is a fresh take on vampires. If you've read much vampire fiction, like Brian Lumley's Necroscope stories or Matheson's "I Am Legend" you'll know there's nothing fresh about it.

The start of the novel detailing the combined crime/medical investigation is where it's strongest. Tellingly Chuck Hogan is a thriller writer, and not known as a horror writer, and this is probably a testament to his comfort within the crime genre.

The main story takes roughly half the book to get going, doesn't do much for another 150 pages and then wraps up in a bit of a blur. It's pretty much unforgivable to introduce a character late in the story, just so you can kill them off, and artificially try and make it matter. Unforgivable, and it doesn't work. Obviously, as this is the first in a proposed trilogy, nothing is actually resolved.

Character progression is either non-existent or cardboard at best. Ephraim Goodweather is a medical investigator, his colleague and sometime lover, Nora, works alongside him. His thoughts stray occasionally to his ex-wife Kelly and their son Zack.

Ephraim goes from mild-mannered doctor to vampire killing machine in the space of a couple of days, with very little soul-searching or self-analysis. Nora is there because the main character should have a girlfriend, but she appears and disappears at random. If she wasn't there, it wouldn't matter. The ex-wife and son are used in exactly the stereotypical way you've come to expect.

Setrakian, the old man who has dedicated most of his life to hunting vampires, is the most fully developed character, but even he is just Van Helsing Lite.

Most of the main plot is fairly routine,(seriously, try Brian Lumley's Necroscope books if you want to see Vampires given a fresh take), but there are a few standalone scenes, unrelated directly to the main plot, that are better paced and genuinely creepy. That's why I think with a strong editor in charge of the project, a lot more could have been made of it. As it is, it's a rambling, over-long introduction to what will hopefully be two better-paced sequels.

A corking read !
When's the next in the series coming out ? I can't wait ! This was a brilliantly exciting read, very tense, even when it seemed not much was happening. There was a real sense of foreboding for the first 50-60 pages, but as other reviewers have noted, it's fairly easy to guess what's behind the mysterious deaths.
I'm not a big horror fan, but this was easy to read, and not too many gruesome bits. It felt more like a thriller than a ghost or horror story, and much like the best sorts of thrillers, I didn't want to put the book down - I managed to read it in two days.
The only downside about it was knowing that it's the first in a trilogy, and that the story wasn't going to be wrapped up neatly by the last page. However, the pacing was really good, the story didn't feel rushed or indeed, too drawn-out.
But remind me - vampires ARE supposed to die in direct sunlight, right ? Hmm...