 The Strain was written by Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro and You know unfortunately Guillermo's skill as a filmmaker doesn't really translate to skill as a novelist This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long now before I get into the Real meat of the review. I just want to give a few quick announcements about the channel As of this recording the Aragon video should have just come out yesterday, I think and After that there will be another review, which I don't really want to talk about because it's actually Really weird and out there. So we'll just you'll see that in a couple of days After that is the Maya mortal read through and then there should be this and then I'm gonna review another patron requested book which is Kind of weird because I don't normally get those very often now I'm getting two in one month But you know, whatever I'm gonna do that and then I'm reviewing the bands of mourning Which is the final Mistborn book at least the final one that's out so far And by then it should be May and in May. I don't know exactly when I'm gonna be releasing a Scripted video about the rise and fall of Artemis Fowl, which should be a lot of fun and then I have a scripted video all about World War Z which should also be pretty great and Somewhere in there once I'm finished with all the reviews I'm gonna start reading the House of Night books so that I can get in and do a whole thing on that So that should be a lot of fun, but you know and none of that's set in stone But you know that's how it is, but anyways the strain so the strain is basically a modern take on Vampires, you know, it's actually kind of a combination of the old vampire myths and modern zombie outbreak stories because vampirism is like a virus which Which when people get infected it Kills them and then sort of brings them back in a different form and then they go after you only instead of eating your brains or eating Your flesh they're trying to drink your blood and if they drink your blood then it spreads and it just gets bigger and bigger from there so yeah, it's like combination of the two and Originally Guillermo del Toro actually wanted to make this into a movie But he just wasn't able to do it for whatever reason so he wrote this series of books with Chuck Hogan And then it got popular enough that he was able to turn it into a television show Which I have seen and I think the television show is really really good It's on Hulu by the way if you have that hashtag not sponsored, but anyways, I think it's really good Not say it doesn't have issues, but Yeah, the show is better than the book that said I'm gonna try and talk about the book a little bit more on its own merits because it came first now That said the plot of this is Well, it's structured Kind of like a thriller But also kind of like a movie and that's what I mean when I say Guillermo del Toro's Skill as a filmmaker doesn't really translate into skill as a novelist because the structure of a movie or television show is different from the structure of a book and for example The characters in this most of them particularly the main character Ephraim when he is first introduced it's like it starts in a scene where he's just in his apartment playing video games with his son and Then it goes into His whole backstory about his divorce and how much he loves his son and the issues he had with his wife and How much his job as a doctor at the CDC means to him and all that and Like that's most of his development right there is given to you in like a page and that's Well, it's kind of obnoxious, and I know that's a common thing in thrillers Especially thrillers that are aimed at adult men like you know those Paperback books that you buy it like the airport, you know that that's pretty common and I guess Some people are okay with that But honestly, I find it super obnoxious because it does that with most every character in this book with the exception of Abraham Satracian and Satracian is like this old holocaust survivor who ran into Vampires or as he calls them Shkregoi back during World War two and Learned oh shit. These are real and he spent pretty much the rest of his life hunting them and so when this book starts He realizes what's going on before anybody else And so he actually meets up with Ephraim and some others and he tries to help them or rather they try to help him Might be more accurate putting it Bring the plague to an end before it can get out of control Now plot-wise this book is Man I'm not sure if I like it or not because like I said its structure Is kind of clumsy and doesn't work all that well in the form of a book, but It starts off amazing and it actually starts off better than a TV show I think because At the very beginning a plane lands at an airport in New York City And it just goes completely dark like all everything shuts off and then they go inside and everybody on board is dead Like they have no idea what killed them and so they bring in the Center for Disease Control And that's how Ephraim and them get involved and they just look at it like yeah I don't know what killed these people but then the bodies go missing and then they start coming back to life as you know as vampires and they go around killing people and The thing is in the show Um The audience had a pretty good idea of what was going on from the beginning at least a general idea like all the Smaller details you found out along with the characters whereas in the book The audience and the characters have no clue what's happening at first So you're finding it out with them and it does an amazing job of building up tension and just making you really afraid for what's gonna happen next and Making you realize okay. Yeah, these guys have to get this shit under control or a lot of people are gonna die So that's that's pretty great. Um, that said it also goes on a little too long in that Building tension era. I think in fact, I would say this book should have been longer because excuse me um Yeah, the first like two-thirds of it or the first half of it Excuse me again. The first half to two-thirds of it is like just building tension and Well, there's like very little release in there anywhere. So when the climax comes it feels like it goes down a little too quick and that's just a little disappointing to me like it's not awful, but a little disappointing and So I wish that this book had just been a little longer Like let's say 60 70 pages longer so that they could add a few more steps in between them Finding out what's going on and confronting the master as he's called not to mention that more time also would have allowed them to have character developments in there somewhere like I Get it. This is just the first in a trilogy and there will most likely be some more later on I don't know how closely the show follows these books like the first one is followed pretty closely But I don't know about the second and third ones. But anyways, it would have been great for there to be some other character development in there and Well, there really isn't that much other than again Abraham Satracian who his back stories revealed through a series of flashbacks Which are spread throughout the book, which is a very good way of doing it and quite frankly the pros in this the actual writing itself is Not good. Okay. It Spends a little bit too long describing actions like The way I would put it is that it's very good at describing scenery particularly when it's describing like the vampires and What they look like and it does a great job of making them feel grotesque because you'll get like entire paragraphs just describing How their skin is pale and how their eyes are dead and how They have like stingers in their mouths and what those look like and it'll go into detail about like Dead bodies after they've been killed and stuff and it really does make everything feel grotesque and unpleasant Which you know this story, I don't know if I'd call it a horror story, but it definitely has a lot of horror elements So it's great that they did that but when it's describing people's actions like it should Use you should usually keep those not to a minimum necessarily, but You shouldn't spend too long on it because then action scenes and stuff can get really bogged down like Just say he swung his sword cut off the beast's head something like that rather than he swung his sword Like a baseball player it reminded him of when he was a kid and used to play baseball And he usually really loved all the blah blah blah like this book has moments where it goes on like that and It really drags the whole thing down like this could have been a really quick-paced Story after you know after all the tension has been built up and we already realized okay Yeah, fucking vampires and shit like that could have been great but as it stands the action scenes are well, they're not great and One last thing I want to mention that Did bother me is that well This doesn't really have a Villain well, okay, it does have a villain, but it doesn't focus on him all that much like In the show we have you know the master. He's the head of the vampires and he is the overall villain But we don't see him all that often. We mostly see his lieutenant who is this old German Nazi who is now a vampire? And in the show, he's you know, he's pretty good like he is the one that we see the most So they got a decent actor to play him and he comes across as intimidating yada yada yada Whereas in the book it's just the master and because we don't see him that often We don't really have a focus for the heroes to be fighting against, you know, it's just okay, yeah, they're fighting the vampire horde and I feel like that drives it down a bit especially because Satracian again, he's an old Holocaust survivor. So having somebody who was a Nazi is a pretty big deal in the show whereas in the book We just don't get any focus like that and Well, that's that's really disappointing Now I want to reiterate like I know I was complaining about this a lot, but I enjoyed this book I thought it was decent, you know, if you want to get the story. I Would recommend the show because again the book is just It feels like they took the structure the story structure of a movie and glommed it onto a book and that just didn't work super well and I don't know if Guillermo or Chuck Hogan is to blame for the pros but like, you know, it's just clunky and I didn't like it that much but Yeah, if you got nothing better to do or if you couldn't get into the show for whatever reason but you think that the concept is really awesome, then I'd go ahead and check it out and For that matter, I should mention that this book came out during like the midst of the twilight and vampire craze So that was when we were getting books like Twilight or Vampire Academy or the Vampire Diaries and you know shit like that And so having vampires like this who you know meant business and were coming out and they were gonna fucking kill you That would definitely be really refreshing if you read it back then whereas nowadays that's kind of faded so I Don't know how others would feel about that. I really don't like obviously all of this is opinion But this one is going to be Really really dependent on what you're looking for Thanks a bunch for watching and thanks a whole bunch especially to all my patrons Including my $10 up patrons oppo Savalainen brother Santotis Charles go Christopher Hawkins Christopher Quintin Joel Joseph Pendergraft Taylor Briggs and Tobacco Crow that a list is getting that list is getting pretty long but You know, I really appreciate it couldn't do it without you guys and if you watch this far Thanks a bunch. Please like the video comments on the video and subscribe to my channel and Well, I would imagine a lot of you have already done that But if you haven't then do that and I will see you next time Bye