The Fall (The Strain Trilogy, 2)

The tension-filled sequel to The Strain, from the world-famous director whose films include Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy. Humans have been displaced at the top of the food chain, and now understand -- to their outright horror -- what it is to be not the consumer, but the consumed. Ephraim Goodweather, director of the New York office of the Centers for Disease control, is one of the few humans who understands what is really happening. Vampires have arrived in New York City, and their condition is contagious. If they cannot be contained, the entire world is at risk of infection. As Eph becomes consumed with the battle against the total corruption of humanity, his ex-wife, Kelly, now a vampire herself, is ever-more determined to claim their son, Zack. As the Biblical origins of the Ancient ones are gradually revealed, Eph learns that there is a greater, more terrible plan in store for the human race -- worse even than annihilation!

Amazon.com Review

Product Description The vampiric virus unleashed in The Strain has taken over New York City. It is spreading across the country and soon, the world. Amid the chaos, Eph Goodweather—head of the Center for Disease Control’s team—leads a small band out to stop these bloodthirsty monsters. But it may be too late. Ignited by the Master’s horrific plan, a war erupts between Old and New World vampires, each vying for total control. Caught between these warring forces, humans—powerless and vulnerable—are no longer the consumers, but the consumed. Though Eph understands the vampiric plague better than anyone, even he cannot protect those he loves from the invading evil. His ex-wife, Kelly, has been turned by the Master, and now she stalks the city, in the darkness, looking for her chance to reclaim Zack, Eph’s young son. With the future of the world in the balance, Eph and his courageous team, guided by the brilliant former professor and Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian and exterminator Vasiliy Fet, must combat a terror whose ultimate plan is more terrible than anyone first imagined—a fate worse than annihilation. A Q&A with Academy Award®-winner Guillermo Del ToroQ: You’ve written screenplays and directed numerous movies, to name a few of your many accomplishments. What motivated you to write a novel?Del Toro: Well, it’s a different challenge, but I've always written short stories and then, in my film work, storylines for movies (the storyline is a slightly "freer" form than screenplay writing) I have published some of my short stories in the past and it is my secret dream to write shivery tales for young readers. My favorite author in that sense is Roald Dahl who mixed it free-style between the grotesque and the magical. I love the short story form as a reader but if a novel has a terse structure I find it far more immersive and fulfilling. Nevertheless some of my favorite authors, Borges, Quiroga, Saki, etc. are masters of the short story form. The novel grew out of appetite and scope.Q: You are one of the most extraordinarily imaginative and creative thinkers working in the arts today. What were some of the influences that have contributed to your success? Do you have any kind of a muse? Del Toro: Curiously enough I regularly draw more inspiration from painters and books than I do from other films. Painters like Carlos Schwabe, Odilon Redon, Fliecien Rops, Bocklin, Freud, Bacon, Thomas Cole and many others, never fail to excite me and in the book front there are just as many authors... Dickens, does the trick every time as does Wilde, Rulfo, Quiroga, etc.Q:Many of your movies have centered on fantastical characters. Why did you choose to write your first novel about vampires?Del Toro:All of my life I’ve been fascinated by them but always from a Naturalist's point of view. Cronos, my first movie, wanted to be a rephrasing of the genre—I love the rephrasing of an old myth. When I tackled Blade II, I approached it with a myriad of ideas about Vampire Biology but only a few of those made it into the film. Tonally, the movie needed to be an action film and some of the biological stuff was too disturbing already... I love the idea of the biological, the divine and the evolutionary angles to explain the origin and function of the Vampire genus. Some of my favorite books about Vampirism are treatises on Vampiric "fact”--books by Bernard J Hurwood, Augustin Camet, and Montague Summers.Q:There are many stories, movies, and even a television show involving vampires. The Strain Trilogy uses the idea that vampires are a plague, and that the lead hunter is a scientist from the Centers for Disease Control. What was your inspiration for this twist? Del Toro:When I was a kid I loved The Night Stalker and I fell in love with the idea Matheson and Rice posited, of exploring a creature of such powerful stature through the point of view of a common worker, a man used to deal with things in a procedural way. "Just another day at the job...".Q:How did you and Chuck Hogan come together to write The Strain Trilogy? How does your collaboration work?Del Toro:It was a true collaboration. I had created a "bible" for the book. It contained most of the structural ideas and characters and Chuck then took his pass on it and invented new characters and ideas. Fet (one of my favorite characters) was completely invented by him. And then I did my pass, writing new chapters or heavily editing his pass, and then he did a pass on my pass and so on and so forth. This is the way I have co-written in the past. I loved Chuck's style and ideas from reading his books and I specifically wanted him as a partner because he had a strong sense of reality and had NEVER written a horror book. I knew we would complete each other in the creation of this book. What surprised me is that he came up with some gruesome moments all on his own! He revealed himself to be a rather disturbed man! A Q&A with Hammett Award-winner Chuck HoganQ:What most surprised you about working with Guillermo Del Toro? Has working with him impacted your own work? In your former career as a video store clerk, did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine working on a project like this—with a legend like Del Toro?Hogan:I'd never co-authored anything, nor had I published a true work of horror before, and here I was embarking on an epic trilogy with a master of the genre. I probably should have been more intimidated--yet I felt an immediate kinship with the material, as well as true excitement at the challenge of bringing the story to life, both of which carried me through. Guillermo is a daunting first audience, and yet an incredibly generous collaborator. Not to mention an amazing resource: it's just fun to have to ask him a question—say, about why the vampires run hot instead of cold—know that, not only will he take me through their intricate biology, but he will embroider the account with corroborating examples from the field of entomology, marine life, and some arcane fact about the function of human blood platelets.Q:The Town, Devils in Exile, and The Killing Moon, probe the dark side of human nature. What draws you to this theme, and to the genre of suspense?Hogan:Crime and horror are both genres of existentialism, and I am drawn to stories of man at his extremes, of people who find themselves tested, haunted, threatened. I believe a writer should challenge himself in his work just as he challenges the characters in his story—that anything less would be inauthentic and dishonest. What I love about The Strain is that the journey of the story takes this maxim and multiplies it by one thousand.

From Publishers Weekly

Set over the course of three intense weeks, Del Toro and Hogan's gripping second volume in their near-future vampire trilogy picks up where The Strain, the first volume, left off, as the undead, aided by elderly Eldritch Palmer, one of the world's three richest men, tighten their hold on the planet. Epidemiologists Ephraim Goodweather and Nora Martinez, Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian, and Vasiliy Fet, "New York City Bureau of Pest Control Services worker and independent exterminator," oppose the vampires (or strigoi), as they did in the first book. Setrakian pins his hopes for stopping the vampires on tracking down a 17th-century grimoire that describes the origins of their leaders, the Seven Original Ancients. Despite the story's essential grimness, the authors manage to inject some sardonic humor, even as the plot developments will leave readers wondering how the concluding book can possibly end well. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Acclaimed film director Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) and popular thriller writer Hogan (Devils in Exile, 2010) turn in the second entry in their vampires-versus-humanity trilogy, after The Strain (2009). Just two months after vampires landed at New York’s JFK airport, civilization is fast disappearing as the vampiric virus makes its way across the country and the world. Disgraced former Center for Disease Control director Eph Goodweather is leading a small but fierce band of resistors, but he is increasingly sidetracked by the devastating attacks of his ex-wife, Kelly. She has been turned into a vampire and is now after her “dear ones,” specifically her 11-year-old son, Zack, who both fears and longs for his mother. It’s left to the wily old vampire fighter Setrakian, a former professor and Holocaust survivor, to come up with a game plan. He determines that the key to defeating the vampires lies in an ancient and valuable book, which is currently on auction at Sotheby’s. All he needs is $25 million and some chutzpah to save humanity. With its taut pacing and macabre fight scenes, many of which take place in NYC’s old subway tunnels, this scary novel should appeal to fans of both vampire and horror novels. --Joanne Wilkinson

From the Back Cover

From the authors of the instant New York Times bestseller The Strain comes the next volume in one of the most imaginative and frightening thriller series in many, many years Last week they invaded Manhattan. This week they will destroy the world.The vampiric virus unleashed in The Strain has taken over New York City. It is spreading and soon will envelop the globe. Amid the chaos, Eph Goodweather—head of the Centers for Disease Control's team—leads a band out to stop these bloodthirsty monsters. But it may be too late.Ignited by the Master's horrific plan, a war erupts between Old and New World vampires, each vying for control. At the center of the conflict lies a book, an ancient text that contains the vampires' entire history . . . and their darkest secrets. Whoever finds the book can control the outcome of the war and, ultimately, the fate of us all. And it is between these warring forces that humans—powerless and vulnerable—find themselves no longer the consumers but the consumed. Though Eph understands the vampiric plague better than anyone, even he cannot protect those he loves. His ex-wife, Kelly, has been transformed into a bloodcrazed creature of the night, and now she stalks the city looking for her chance to reclaim her Dear One: Zack, Eph's young son.With the future of humankind in the balance, Eph and his team, guided by the brilliant former professor and Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian and exterminator Vasiliy Fet and joined by a crew of ragtag gangsters, must combat a terror whose ultimate plan is more terrible than anyone has imagined—a fate worse than annihilation.

About the Author

Guillermo del Toro is an Academy Award®–winning film director as well as a screenwriter, producer, and New York Times bestselling novelist. He is best known for his foreign fantasy films, especially Pan’s Labyrinth, and American mainstream movies like The Shape of Water. Del Toro has published multiple bestselling adult novels with HarperCollins, including The Strain, which was adapted into a TV series by FX, and he is the creator of Trollhunters, Netflix’s most-watched children’s series.Chuck Hogan is the author of several acclaimed novels, including Devils in Exile and Prince of Thieves, which won the 2005 Hammett Award , was called one of the ten best novels of the year by Stephen King, and was the basis of the motion picture The Town.Chuck Hogan es autor de varias aclamadas novelas, entre las cuales se encuentra Prince of Thieves que ganó el Hammett Award 2005 y que fue considerada una de las diez mejores novelas del año por Stephen King.

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