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

November 1, 2011
The final book in director del Toro and thriller writer Hogan's (The Killing Moon, 2007, etc.) epic vampire trilogy. Since the end of the previous book, the Master, an ancient being and source of a blood-borne parasitic infestation with vampire-like symptoms, has exerted near total control over the world. His vampire minions and a few human collaborators have set up concentration camps dedicated solely to harvesting blood for vampire consumption, while the rest of humanity scratches out a meager existence, watching re-runs on television and waiting in terror for their turn to be hauled to the camps. Hope for humanity is at a low ebb. Nuclear explosions have left the planet in a state of near-perpetual night. Abraham Setrakian, the old-world vampire hunter who has been trailing the Master for decades, is dead, and Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, the epidemiologist who first understood the nature of the new threat, now spends most of his time in a pill-induced haze, pining for his lost son, who, though still human, is under the Master's thrall. There are still pockets of resistance, though. Gangbanger turned fearless vampire hunter Augustin "Gus" Elizade has set up base in the now-unused Columbia University campus, and exterminator Vasiliy Fet is working to translate an ancient, silver-bound book that Setrakian seemed to think contained the knowledge necessary to destroy the Master for good. When Dr. Nora Martinez, Goodweather's former colleague and lover who is now attached to Fet, is taken to a blood camp, Goodweather, Fet and Elizalde, along with the mysterious half-vampire Mr. Quinlan, must come together to free her, and then to find a way to end the Master's reign once and for all. While one of the principal charms of the series so far has been its unique, near-plausible scientific treatment of vampirism, the third book introduces elements of the supernatural, which is somewhat disappointing. Still, the prose crackles, the plot barrels forward with increasing momentum and the authors' knack for thoughtful horror and striking imagery remains intact. A satisfying conclusion to an intelligent, utterly chilling horror trilogy.

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Starred review from November 1, 2011
The concluding volume of the horror trilogy concerning a moden-day vampire invasion (coauthored by noted film director del Toro and noted crime-fiction writer Hogan) finds the ragtag band of human rebels scrambling to find a way to neutralize the Master, the leader of the vampires, before he takes over the world. Human society still exists, but it's the vampires who run the show, keeping humans in camps, harvesting them for blood, allowing human society to continue so long as it pleases the Master. Ephraim Goodweather, one of the rebels, searches desperately for his son; taken by his (now-vampiric) mother, the boy lives with the Master, who's been not-so-patiently waiting for the boy to become old enough to serve as the Master's new physical host. Meanwhile, Vasiliy Fet, the exterminator turned vampire killer, has obtained a nuclear device. All he needs is a way to detonate it, but can he and the other rebels crack the code of the ancient manuscript, the Occido Lumen (which holds the secret location of the Master's birthplace), and kill the Master before the vampire king wipes them all out? Fans of the previous two novels, The Strain (2009) and The Fall (2010), will flock to this satisfying wrap-up. Readers unfamiliar with the earlier books will no doubt be a little confusedthe authors necessarily assume some knowledge of the storybut even as a stand-alone, the book offers a thrilling and frightening adventure. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Del Toro and Hogan's vampire series has developed a ravenous (if not bloodthirsty) fan base, and this final volume in the series will deliver a full-course meal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)