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Your Saturday Book Review: The Strain and The Night Eternal Trilogy

The fact that The Strain was co-written by director Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan caught my attention. I have seen few of Del Toro’s films, but his first full-length work as a director and writer, Cronos, was a highly original take on the vampire myth. It’s not so much I remember the movie, as that images from it continue to pop into my mind, like bits of a not quite forgotten nightmare, some form of post-cinematic-stress-syndrome.

So, even though “vampire” is a genre done past death when I saw The Strain at $1.99 on Kindle, it seemed at least worth checking out the sample.

The story opens with a prologue and the words “Once upon a time…” These words are being spoken by a grandmother telling a “bubbeh meiser” or “grandmother’s tale” to her grandson. The setting as established quickly by details like the borscht being served in a wooden bowl. We’re in Poland before the Holocaust, “once upon a time” indeed. Continue reading Your Saturday Book Review: The Strain and The Night Eternal Trilogy