The Strain, by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Mark Frauenfelder 4:11 pm Fri Jun 26, 2009

I'm not a fan of vampire fiction, but The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan is more along the lines of a vampire-zombie-epidemic-in-New York-City, and wow is it terrific.

The first chapter (after the short prologue, which didn't interest me and almost made me abandon the book) is about an airplane that lands at JFK from Germany and goes completely dark on the runway. It's so creepy that when I told my wife and daughter about it *they* got creeped out just from my description.

Someone said The Strain is a combination of The Stand, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I am Legend, which I'd say is a pretty fair way of describing it.

I was sent a review copy by the publisher, but I wanted to read it past our usual bedtime so I bought the Kindle version and read it in the dark on my iPhone so as not to keep Carla up with a reading light on. I recommend reading all scary books in the dark this way.

The Strain, by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

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