I summarise THE STRAIN as a mix between zombie and vampire fiction. So the vampires aren't those sweet sparkly or sexy kinds that you find in fiction alot of the time, these vampires are... well they're like the vampires from Blade 2.
Remember them? The Reapers... I think that's what they were called (or am I getting confused with Firefly??) They ate normal vampires, and in doing so, spread the virus from body to body, creating overwhelming numbers of these nasty vamps. This idea, this outnumber idea, is usually found in zombie fiction, but it works well for animalistic vampires as well. That’s why I’m calling it a mix.
To start off, I love Guillermo. I've loved him since I watched Blade 2 with the commentary on. He loves his monsters, and that comes through in this book. These monsters are LOVED, they have been thought about long and hard so there's a lot of what I call sci-babble, in which they attempt to explain how a vampire would work medically. Not so much of a fan of sci-babble – but the vampire theories are fun here (the virus mutates the organs, they become more batlike so the vampires defecate a batlike guano full of proteins), so they kept my interest. (again, recalling Blade 2, with the reaper autopsy)
The plot in a nutshell, is that a plane lands at JFK airport, everyone inside is dead, and the CDC are called in to explain why. It turns out it’s vampires. That's not a spoiler; it says it on the back of the book. This is a vampire novel.
Keeping that in mind, it takes 100+ pages for the vampires to show up. I mean, it was fast paced and all, but I felt a lot of filler for those first hundred pages. First we're looking at the airplane through the tower, then we're approaching the airplane with the baggage loader, then a new point of view of a CDC guy at home with his kid talking about his marriage, then the CDC guy heading to the airplane, then the baggage handler again, then what felt like fifty pages about an eclipse - viewed from a space station, and a ballgame, and some random people on the street.
Now, when I say "viewed"? I mean we're head hopping. We as a reader are taking flying leaps from character-head to character-head. It was a little awkward, I mean I'm sitting there thinking "Where are the VAMPIRES in this VAMPIRE book, Guillermo??" and we're switching POVs about random people, sometimes only staying with a person for less than a page.
This might work for movies, I'm yet to be convinced it works for books.
It was so weird at first that it actually took me a while to figure out who our major players are. I thought the baggage handler was going to be a vampire killer, but no, she gets two close-together chapters and then ... bye. Okay. And we don’t meet one of our MAJOR players until, I'm sure, about halfway through the book. And I didn’t take much notice of him because I thought he was just going to be a random POV.
We jump into an astronaut’s head, so she can tell us that the eclipse is creepy from space. I mean... why? Sure it’s creepy, we get it, you told us this with what feels like six other characters and we're never see this character again? Why should I care that she thinks the Earth is creepy with a shadow on it? Wouldn't it have been a good move to use the POV of the major players?
We ended up with FOUR major characters (not including the other head-hopping), one main character - the CDC guy, and the main antagonist.
Jumping between four people's heads is hard enough, then we have the main and sub antagonists, plus the interludes which take place in the past, and on top of that, all the other random POVs - like, is it enough already? Do we have enough scene changes?
I felt unable to focus for the first third to half of the book. I don't mind head hopping, but you have to have a reason to do it. Simply because you want to tell me the eclipse looks eerie from space is not enough of a reason to disconnect me from who I'm supposed to be caring about - i.e. CDC guy. (I know it was only a throwaway page but I remember it because it was so incredibly jarring. I started thinking "do the vampires come from space?")
HOWEVER! Having said that, the book starts to gel (about the time the vampires show up) about 150 pages in. We still have head hopping, but it seems purposeful, we hop into people’s lives to experience the result of the infection and the ramifications. And when that’s done, we start just sharing our time between the important people and that’s when THE STRAIN grows some whiskers and becomes a GREAT book.
It’s really good, the vampire theories are fun, it’s scary and creepy, unsettling and exciting. Plus they throw in some ancient vampire mythos. All the things you want out of a vampire book! If only they’d sped up and pruned the initial, confused beginning.
I’m going to buy the second book THE FALL, which is out now. Now that all the characters know what’s going on, I hope we can keep the speedy forward motion, with all head hopping leading us towards a final, melded conclusion.
