Book Review: The Strain by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan

…to all the monsters in my nursery: May you never leave me alone

I had watched The Strain some time ago knowing that Guillermo del Toro had written the main storyline. It was great and suspense full. Curious how the book was I looked around for it and eventually I found it. I thought it was an okay story and very suspenseful.

Book Review: The Strain by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan

Rating:


Title & Author: The Strain by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan
Genre: Fantasy, Horror
Release date: June 2 2009
Series: The Strain Trilogy
Publisher: William Morrow

Synopsis

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. Ephraim “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 run cold.

In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing.

So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city – a city that includes his wife and son – before it is too late.

I give The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan three out of five hearts because it was a suspenseful story, but it wasn’t the greatest and had the same problem as the tv-series had. It dragged on.

I do think the premise sounds really great, but it didn’t come out that well. I don’t know how much of it is Guillermo, but I loved Pans Labyrinth.

Abraham is an elderly man who knows a lot about this vampiric virus that is going around in the city. He is hunting The Master. But he seemed to be the only character with the deepest development. The rest of the characters felt thin and flat.

Overall I think The Strain is not worth reading. It started out suspenseful, but then it just drags on and bored me.

TV-series

The TV-series started out really great and I really wanted to know where it was going, since I hadn’t read the book yet. But by the end of the first season, I felt it was dragging and got bored with it. I was so disappointed.

I do think the tv series followed the book pretty well and that was great, but also the only great thing.

Let me know what you thought of this book and/or tv-series!
If you have any requests for which book I should talk about next, please let me know in the comments down below.

For now, let books enrich your life!

Goodreads

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