The Strain, too many eggs in one undead basket?
Posted by Ms Harker | Filed under Horror Reading
I have made no secret of my excitement at the prospect of Guillermo Del Toro’s collaboration with Chuck Logan on a written trilogy within the vampire genre; commencing with The Strain. The net was a blaze with hype, the ad campaign was brilliant, featuring a website and trailers (see below). Having now read the book, I’m going to try and explain my genuinely mixed feelings about it, with minimal spoilers.
The inside of the dust jacket reads as follows:
“A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC, Dr Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary Project, a rapid response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood runs cold.”
Th novel reads in segments, taking us to various locations, at times in quick succession giving the story a staccato feel that would give Toccato and Fugue a run for its money (look it up on iTunes kids). This at times maintains the feeling of urgency, conveying the spread of the ‘disease’ and challenges presented by the obvious conspiracy assisting its progress. However at other times it is distracting and as a reader it can feel like you are reading a movie script, going from scene to scene, being expected to suspend your disbelief just a little too much.
Del Toro and Logan have remained reasonably faithful to traditional vampire lore, however have given it a twist. There is a hierarchy of elders that reaches far back into time, the vamp’s disintegrate in sunlight (praise the gods), there is a nemesis fighting against the vamp’s and they hunger for human blood.
The twist is the form the vampires take, based around the idea of an infection, overtaking the host so that there is no remnant of the person post completion of the diseases incubation. The disease completely remodels the host, leaving them to become a walking decaying blood thirsty beastie. I can’t help feeling that in this incarnation Del Toro and Logan have put all their eggs in one undead basket. This decay of the host almost intimates zombie rather than vampire, the way they extract blood also leans a little the way of sci-fi, however it works. As you definitely feel the fear and dread as one of these ravenous creatures crawls out of the dirt at dusk, to spread the strain throughout New York.
When reading The Strain its important to remember it’s a trilogy, everything will not be tied up with a beautiful blood red bow. There is enough in the world Del Toro and Hogan have created to make this reader want to know more. Let’s be honest was the creator of Pans Labyrinth and self confessed horror fan going to create a blood clot on the canvas of horror literature? I think not, however I’m keen to see if the writers can flex their collective undead muscle and vamp up the action in the second novel.
Ms Harker
Tags: Horror, Horror Novels, Vampire
One Response to “The Strain, too many eggs in one undead basket?”
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Musings Across A Continuum » Blog Archive » Horror Book Trailers, the good and the bad… Says:
September 26th, 2009 at 4:33 pm[...] they can be really good or really bad! A brilliant example was the campaign attached to ‘The Strain‘ by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan. This campaign had a fabulous website and the trailers [...]
