The Strain by Chuck Hogan & Guillermo Del Toro
7.5 / 10
There is Resident Evil, Shaun of the Dead, The Walking Dead and tons of zombie genre fiction. The literary scene has its own share of genre outbreak in the bookshelves. Only this time Chuck Hogan partnering with Guillermo Del Toro–who is well known for his silver screen hit Pan’s Labyrinth, created a twist in the genre by mixing the undead with vampirism. They probably are sick tired of how zombies can be awfully stupid villains.
The partnership created The Strain.
The first book of the authors’ recent trilogy doesn’t seem to have been infectious enough. 2/3 of the book is horrendously a drag as the authors squander pages on only setting the characters and plot. You probably can end up skipping some parts knowing that it’ll be another chapter dedicated to some unknown idiot in the story gorged by vampire infected creatures for the reason of obviously pea-brain thinking of characters. As soon as readers get quickly over the nonsense pages, the story can at least entertain enough.
Lastly, exchange of night and day dictates the tone of each chapter. Each transition should then have included the time of each event to add more suspense and to emphasize importance of the two halves of each day.
Chuck Hogan’s The Strain would have been something of a book, only if he didn’t try too hard stretching it to a trilogy. 2.5 out of 5 stars.
The Stinger is one of Hogan’s unique feature of the infected. Very much contrast to the conventional Vampire’s superior fangs.
Pencil Slip 