Val looks at The Strain

Since my friend Val is a big fan of the vampire, and frequently a bit heated about the current state of vampire fiction, I asked her if she’d like to review del Toro and Hogan’s The Strain as a counter-point to my own review. She did so.  Thankfully she managed to trim her 8000+ words down to a more managable 1500 words.  So check out the review below, as always comments are welcome!  -Mike

It’s very hard, in my opinion, to write a truly great and well thought-out vampire book. Sure… you can write a book that has vampire characters in it but that’s a dime a dozen nowadays. I can name at least 10 vampire series of books but not all of them are good. There are so many books out there that just merely throw the vampire into its story, without any real thought as to what they are or where they come from. I’ve never made any bones about my severe dislike for most vampire fiction books and although I might like them if I could just get through the bad sentence structure and the almost angelic romantic views of vampires, I could never really get into the authors’ lack of understanding about the creatures that stalk our dreams and take over our imaginations.

Then I was talking to a friend during my lunch break and he told me he was reading the new Guillermo Del Toro book. I had mentioned I wanted to read it and the next week was given the book. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t even know it was a vampire story until reading the back of the book but I decided to give it a shot and, hoping for at least an entertaining read, opened the book and began the journey. What I got was perhaps one of the best written, most UN-romanticized, old and yet slightly modernized view of the vampire.

Review: The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The Strain
Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
William Morrow, 2009

I had planned on finishing Open Your Eyes first but I mentioned that I had The Strain to a friend and was immediately guilted into reading this first so that I can hand it over. The Strain is the first in a trilogy of novels co-authored by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. While I am both familiar and a fan of del Toro’s work, from the woefully underrated Blade II to the masterful and haunting Pan’s Labyrinth, I am not at all familiar with Mr. Hogan.

The Strain begins with a simple story a grandmother tells her grandson about a vampire. The kind of folksy, cautionary tale whose moral involves eating your vegetables and obeying your elders. From there the story shifts to modern day where a Boeing 777 lands at JFK, then immediately falls silent. As the horror is slowly revealed events slowly spiral out of control as vampirism begins to spread quickly across the city of Manhattan. The Strain is a fairly quick read that at 416 pages manages to maintain a razor’s edge like balance between pacing and atmosphere. Unfortunately it walks that same line between originality and familiarity. Though, on the whole, the balance is definitely in favor of originality.

UPDATED: The Darker Side of Hobbits

The Hobbit movies now officially have a director and the choice couldn’t have been more perfect: Guillermo del Toro. I can’t wait to see what he does with the series. His previous movies have shown a perfect combination of whimsy and psychosis and modeling The Hobbit in his trademark style could make it something truly disturbing (and awesome). I look forward to a very disturbing portrayal of Gollum.

Update from Mike:

I’m pretty excited.  I love the practical effects from Hellboy from the Hand of Doom design, the Samaritans and especially the work done on Kroenen.  I don’t know how much input del Toro had with the prop design but the thought of Jackson, del Toro, and Weta putting their heads together is a pleasing image.  The Balrog was amazing, I will have dreams of Smaug until the movie(s) are released (and will do my best to ignore any pre-release leaks/design shots).

Thoughts on who might play a young Bilbo?  I love Ian Holm’s performance from LotR; hopefully they’ll get someone of his caliber.

Some del Toro links:

Aintitcool post on the announcment.

Variety’s announcement.

del Toro’s IMDB page.

Solid del Toro fansite with pre-official annoucement coverage.