mondojohnson

Guillermo DelToro and Chuck Hogan’s novel The Strain reclaims the vampire mythos from the fangless, flowery teen romance it has become with the Twilight stories, and does so with excessive, gory relish. About time!

The Strain — the first of an epic, apocalyptic trilogy — puts a stake through the heart of the sexy vegetarian vampire made popular by Twilight, and gets us back to what was so creepy about vampires in the first place: they are the undead. They are hijacked human forms, and their hunger is not sexual — it’s the “red-in-tooth-and-claw” variety that makes nature wild, ugly and terrifying.

Many of the novel’s tropes are familiar from post-modern vampire lore: vampirism is a disease (as in Blade); ancient tribes of the undead in league with human co-conspirators (as in Underworld); high-tech vampire-hunting techniques (as in… you get the idea). It also has much in common with the sprawling scope of Stephen King’s The Stand. But the familiarity of these narrative devices do not take away from the scary fun of the book, which you’ll plow through like a bag of potato chips.

But I’ll say it again: the best thing about this book is that it sounds a death knell for the sexy vampire, who has been annoying true horror fans since the reign of Anne Rice. Strigoi!