One down, eleven to go ...

I finished the first of the books on my "already own them" to-read list, The Strain, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

I don't know why I put it down last year -- distracted by something shiny, probably. It's actually a really fast read, once the whole cast is established, and the authors created a good group of people to follow into the next two books, and the big scary vampire apocalypse. 

It's a quirky sort of hybrid -- there's an Old World, "back, foul beast!" (you have to make the sign of the cross there) feel to Setrakian and the lore about the creature who kicks off the current crisis, but there's also faux-scientific virus stuff about the way vampirism works. It makes for a pretty grisly threat, and these guys don't hold back when it comes to describing the developing vampires. (In fact, there were moments when I wanted to say, "Hold back, really! It's okay, I get the picture!") 

These aren't your grandfather's vampires, that's for sure, and there was a weird Romero feel to a lot of it, i.e. vampire zombies! (Sort of.) And I ended up liking a minor character, rat catcher/exterminator extraordinaire Vasily Fet, a bit more than I liked Eph Goodweather, who is ostensibly the protagonist, but I'm still signing up for the next book, at least. I'm always ready for some apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) fiction.