The Night Eternal

October 3, 2011
Del Toro and Hogan’s horror thriller trilogy got off to a rousing start with 2009’s The Strain, but this final volume continues the decline already evident in 2010’s The Fall. Instead of building on the coauthors’ clever modern variations on the classic Dracula motif (e.g., the use of nuclear winter to make life easier for the sun-shunning undead), the conclusion is strictly by the numbers as the various New York City–based protagonists, saddled with personal issues on top of an almost hopeless struggle to survive, try to find a way to rid Earth of the vampiric plague that has overwhelmed it in just a few short years. Readers will miss the series’ Van Helsing, Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian, killed off in the second installment, since the surviving vampire hunters aren’t nearly as interesting. Still, the power and innovations of the kickoff book should lead del Toro fans to hope he’ll take another crack at a scary novel.

This volume continues Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan's cleverly written trilogy, which began with THE STRAIN (2009). Two years after a vampiric virus was unleashed on the human population, humans have been supplanted at the top of the food chain by superior creatures whose own biological needs demand a diet of human blood. Narrator Daniel Oreskes delivers the tale of humankind's mass murder, subjugation, and colonization, orchestrated by the Master, a powerful, vengeful vampire. Oreskes gives appropriate gravitas to the situation and characters--from compliant humans trying to remain unnoticed to the few remaining resistance fighters who are searching for an ancient text that may hold the key to human survival. Oreskes's steady performance combined with a cataclysmic conclusion will leave listeners breathless. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine