'The Strain' Liveblog: Gulping Down All The Horror In A Day

by Neda Ulaby

[Ed. Note: Arts reporter Neda Ulaby took today to read The Strain and write about it as she went. At the bottom of the post — which is where we started with Chapter 1, so if you're just joining us you should start there too — you'll find some background on the book. She's now finished with the book. Obviously, massive spoilers follow.]

Where We Stand: The End

Chapter 15: The Clan...And Epilogue

I'm combining these two because they're both really, really short. It becomes clear that Eph will never get back together with his ex-wife, mostly because he's not into her new squidlike tongue and desire to gnaw upon their son's tender neck.

We meet a bunch of other aged vampires, who've retired to a Pennsylvania asbestos mine. Their Zen-like centeredness comes as a huge relief after all the shrieks of "Nooo!" fading from Manhattan. As befits the first part of a trilogy, the plotline simply goes slack.

Thanks for joining me in this liveblogging experiment. I hope you read The Strain, not in an office chair, under florescent lights, but on a beach or a porch, uninterrupted, reading until the sky darkens and the air chills. Enjoy.

Chapter 14: Lair

The Master has kidnapped Eph's ex-wife, making not a speck of sense. Why would an ancient supernatural entity need to borrow tactics from a drug cartel?

Finally, we get a good gander at the Master, and guess what--he looks a bit like a beast from Pan's Labyrinth, with a hairless, colorless head and worn, washed out apertures. Maybe for the screen version, GDT plans on throwing some work towards Doug Jones, whom he's used in several of his films.

Society is totally disintegrating, by the way, with most everyone in New York undead, and vampire gangs hunting each other by the light of burning buildings. It's a bit silly.

Our heroes' plans for mass immolation of the vampires is thwarted because Eph is so eager to rescue his ex-wife, even though her kidnapping makes no sense. Even more irritatingly, his rush to storm the Master's penthouse means they have to pass up a chance to destroy the Master's coffin. Which makes no sense. No sense. Hundreds of souls.

I'm a little disappointed. What started off as a tight, smart scary book has devolved, in my view, into high camp, with language along the lines of "You will taste my silver, strigoi!" and repetitive vampire/human evisceration. It's fine and even admirable to evoke the flavor of B movies but this tips over into the realm of straight-to-DVD.

More of the liveblog, after the jump...

Chapter 13: Daylight

I love the lunkish Russian exterminator. He reads like he was written to be played by Ron Perlman, who starred so delightfully in GDT's Hellboy. As "an expert on things that burrow and hide...creatures who nest...who feed off the human population," his profession comes in quite handy as our heroes explore the great vampire hive buried in the depths of lower Manhanttan's infrastructure.

Chapter 12: Replication

Things are getting hardcore with the biting and the squid tongues. I will -- and I've never before meant this literally -- spare you the gory details.

The Strain gets increasingly Grand Guignol as vampires take over New York. It's weakened by s a sentimental encounter between Eph and his ex-wife. Seriously, vampires are multiplying by the thousands and you're sitting around processing your divorce? Even if it gives you a chance to say, without irony, "You were sucking the life out of me?"

And a protracted battle with the Master verges on cheesy. I'm sorry. I adore Guillermo del Toro, but even such a skilled storyteller cannot sell me on: "The horror. And the glory. The impious. And the magnificent...Behold the Master!"

Wahh-waah.

Chapter 11: Exposure

Oh god, it's only been three days since the Plane of the Undead hit JFK and already, vampires infest the boroughs like cheap hipsters. And what are our heroes doing? Futzing around New York's CDC headquarters.

There we learn that pro-vampire conspirators have infiltrated the highest level of our nation's departments of public health and emergency response. Count Single Entity's human helper is entirely to blame. He's the rich guy, with motives of immortality and an art collection tiresomely heavy on Francis Bacon. Eldritch Palmer is his name, and his CDC henchmen want to frame Eph and Nora for the murder/vampirization of a colleague. It's time for our heroes to go rogue.

Meanwhile, a tough, likeable first-generation Russian exterminator, mystified by the rat disappearance, heads down into the bowels of the city, undeterred by spooked and disappearing sandhogs. You just don't know if anything's going to jump out and shoot a squid-tongue at him. Such sequences are simply deliciously handled.

Final Interlude: The Ruins

Setrakian engages in a long, lurid struggle with a Nazi vampire in a Roman ruin during the waning days of World War II. He's guarding the Thing/Count Single Entity, who is now being referred to as the Master. Not much of an improvement, but I'll begin to follow suit. It's sort of irresistibly camp.

Chapter 10: The Second Night

The deceased passengers from the plane are happily sucking their way through their more unpleasant neighbors, who generally seem to richly deserve their fates. One quick-thinking housekeeper has prudently removed the children from the household of the litigious lawyer and brought them to her apartment in Queens. In one chilling sequence, the lawyer tries to find them--but now, of course she's a vampire peeking through the mail slot.

So when did millennial-era monsters all start getting such protracted, mobile and tentacled tongues? It's hard to see a monster movie without them. When did this trend even start?

Chapter 9: The Old Professor

I've said it before. The Strain's writing is generally pretty good. Outside Setrakian's pawn shop lurks a man in "a high knit hat -- like the kind the Rastafarians like to wear, except that he lacked the ropy dreadlocks to fill it out, so it sagged off his head like a collapsed soufflé."

Setrakian's gotten Eph and Nora into his pawn shop, which turns out to be a super-secret vampire fighting fort, filled with awesome weaponry. Turns out Setrakian's curriculum vitae includes a stint as distinguished professor of Eastern European Folklore at the University of Vienna.

(Homage alert! I just realized he also shares a first name with Van Helsing.)

Setrakian debunks Eph and Nora's infinite playlist of vampire mythology. Garlic and holy water don't work for "releasing" the undead; it's a strictly burn-and-decapitate process.

Setrakian schools Eph and Nora in the squirm-inducing process of weeding out vampires from the uninfected. One by one. With a big old sword. But the exploding vampire population presents a demographic dilmena to our CDC protagonists.

Meanwhile, all the rats are fleeing the city. The undead plane passengers wreak havoc on their families, friends and neighbors. In particular, a poor young widow learns that the only thing worse than an abusive husband is an abusive vampire husband with a new trick of corporalizing as parasitic worms.

Chapter 8: Dawn

Setrakian's in jail, where he's fortuitously imprisoned with the gangster who transported Count Single Entity's coffin. Here's the scene filmed as one of the trailers for the book, viewable here.

The plot's just thickening now. Coagulating, if you will.

Chapter 7: The First Night

A chief medical examiner is about to let himself into a world of hurt. Dude, if you're alone at night, obsessing over white blood samples that come from livid bodies that suspiciously resemble the undead, must you really venture into a freezer room full of them?

As night falls, the undead Marilyn Manson manqué wisely makes the most of his groupies' lovely necks. The police are getting calls about a fat, naked man roaming the streets with nothing but a red tag on his toe. He's soon aggressively chewing on a young Chicano gangster with the bad luck to have been pressed into service as courier for Count Single Entity's coffin.

Meanwhile, more resourceful undead seem to have found their clothes before returning to their former homes. Gothic family reunions ensue. The most boring plane survivor has made a snack of those two Saint Bernards, and made himself much more interesting and likeable by chaining himself up so he won't nibble on his family.

The vampire's tongues are really gross, squid-like and equipped with stingers. But you know what's grosser? Big gross vampire tongues versus human-armed-with trephine. During the course of that particular battle, Eph and Nora finally figure out what they're up against.

Interlude 3 further identifies Count Single Entity as Sardu-Thing. I'm sorry, but that name is just hopeless. Love its descriptions, though: "Its breath smelled of earth and copper and its tongue clicked in its mouth. Its deep voice sounded like an amalgam of many voices, poured forth as though lubricated by human blood." What happens here is a truly intense parallel portrait of evil, the death camps further tainted by a vampire able to feast unnoticed amongst the prisoners.

Chapter 6: Movement

The least interesting of the plane survivors is suffering horrible esophageal pains and eyeing the raw marinated roast in the fridge. It's pretty clear his family and two large jovial St Bernards are not long for this novel.

Meanwhile, all of the (undead) passengers are getting autopsied, and it's about as hilariously macabre as you can imagine. Exsanguinated bodies leaking gross white opalescent fluid. (Eph is forced to rethink his fondness for whole milk.) I'm rethinking lunch.

And the elderly Romanian, Setrakian, has cleverly breached the medical examiner's office, insisting to the skeptical medical examiners upon the bodies being incinerated before nightfall. Listen to him, people! The police haul Setrakian away. Eph is distracted by personal drama; he's crushed, via speakerphone, in a custody battle. Humiliating!

Chapter 5: Awakening

So it seems Count Single Entity has been secretly shuffling his coffin around, foiling even the watchful eye of airport security. Eph and Nora are beginning to sense that something wicked this way came.

Something so wicked that when an airline captain describes just a slight glimpse of it, my ears ring a little and I actually get goosebumps. I love when reading a book becomes literally sensational, when your body becomes involved in the story -- you shiver, you cry, you laugh.

Interlude 2

Now a depressing concentration camp flashback. Setrakian is a prisoner, "a slave with a talent for woodwork that, in a death camp, is a talent for living." It's there that he first sees Count Single Entity feeding on the weak, at night. It's a compelling premise, that great human evil attracts supernatural ancient evil. If only Guillermo had come up with a better name for his scary vampire/giant than "The Thing." I'll stick with Count Single Entity for now.

Chapter 4: Occultation

A long explanation of what an eclipse actually is, and isn't, and come on, let's get to the biting!

That said, don't get me wrong, because this is one hundred percent a beach read, and the description of the occultation is fabulous. It's elegant, surreal, and pleasingly pulpy. There's something almost Don DeLillo about the writing. Please don't laugh. Check this:

As the crescent sun continued to narrow, the complexion of the sky became a strangled violet. The darkness in the in the west gathered strength like a silent, windless storm, spreading through the sky and closing in around the weakened sun, like a great organism succumbing to a corrupting force spreading from within.

Take that, Twilight!

Meanwhile, Count Single Entity must use his powers of mental persuasion to sate his ungodly appetite. It's a great sequence, involving lots and lots of feral cats. He's like Alf.

The eclipse comes and goes without apparent incident, except for the several hundred people blinded by not wearing appropriate eye protection. Gosh! Hope that's the worst of it.

Chapter 3: Arrival

Oh, the plane of corpses is triggering 9/11-related PTSD on the part of HAZMAT officers. That makes me really sad. Our heroes are just recapping, trying to figure out what went wrong, and it turns out there are four survivors, one a celebrity obviously modeled on Marilyn Manson. A Manson manque. Oh, Guillermo.

In the hold there's a "long rectangular box, black, wooden and heavy looking. Well hello, Count Singular Entity.

And boom! The surviving passengers are awake. Not bloodthirsty -- yet -- and clueless about what happened. They're just...depleted. "The mother of all hangovers," groans fake Marilyn Manson. Ha! Another survivor is a combative tort lawyer barely awake before she begins plotting to sue the airline. We'll see about that, won't we, Guillermo?

I'm loving that the survivors aren't immediately super-strong, or odd, or God forbid, sparkly. There's eeriness to their normalcy that's much better than if their teeth were getting a little pointy or their gazes were becoming unnervingly intense. It's just...the banality of scary.

As for the rest of the passengers? "Why aren't these bodies decomposing as they should?" Eph wonders. Boy, that'd be a good thing to figure out before you go to a press briefing! And hey, did I mention there's a solar eclipse in the works? The "first such solar event in the NYC region in more than four hundred years, since the advent of America?" Could that be relevant to the plot?

Chapter 2: Now Boarding

We meet Eph, and it's clear he's going to be our hero, because he's getting trounced at videogames with his little boy. But alas, this sweet moment of paternal bliss is dashed by Port Authority. It seems Eph is your go-to guy when a plane full of dead bodies shows up at JFK. Off Eph goes to debrief with comely biochemist Nora Martinez, whose thick, dark hair might be a little too luxuriously long and luxurious to meet strict field epidemiologist standards.

The two of them get on the plane in a sequence designed to build suspense through the slow reveal of dark, evocative details -- the weird shadows, the pitch of the bodies.

And ...hello! One of them isn't quite dead yet! As Eph and Nora contemplate the dreadful reality of examining each corpse for signs of undeath, our authors jerk us into...

Interlude 1: Abraham Setrakian.

We met Setrakian as a little boy right at the beginning, listening to his bubbeh talk giants at the beginning, but now he's "in an elegiac mood" in his Spanish Harlem pawnshop. As soon as he touches the mezuzah, I started thinking he's got to have some sort of talisman stashed away that will save the day.

Setrakian seems like a good guy and he's thirsty for revenge, apparently on a single someone, not a vampire-causing virus, so we know there's some sort of single malevolent entity at work. Very Buffy! I like it.

Introduction

All I know going into this is that The Strain's about a virus that turns people to vampires. But del Toro, that devil, throws us off with an old lady talking about giants over a steaming bowl of cabbage borscht.

Eastern European roots? Established. Cryptic Nazi involvement? Check.

Chapter One: The Beginning

Big problems on a plane from Berlin to New York. It's landed and everyone's dead! (Fun fact for this NPR staffer: "ATC" stands for "air traffic controller" as well as All Things Considered.)

The novel's smart enough to credit a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone called "The Arrival." So far, so spooky. A little too mid-career Stephen King; a lot of contemporary horror fiction copies some of his familiar little rhetorical flourishes. Here, we're seeing plenty of anaphors: "Souls. Hundreds of souls." Then, a little later, for extra poignancy, "Hundreds of souls." Yeah, okay, we get it.

Everyone at the airport is flipping out. You can totally tell when co-writer Chuck Hogan takes over the narrative with lines like, "The maintenance crew was using an Arcair slice pack, and exothermic torch favored for disaster work, not only because it was highly portable, but because it was also oxygen powered, using no hazardous secondary gases such as acetylene."

We also meet a creepy old rich guy in Virginia who clearly has a dark hand in what's going on.

About the book...

So, why devote hours to liveblogging a buzzy new horror novel and not, say, Remembrance of Things Past?

First, I figured I could cover The Strain in less than a day. It's a beach read...that I'm reading at the office.

Second, I'm a fangirl. Of the unabashed Guillermo del Toro variety. The erudite Mexican horror auteur hooked me back in 2001 with a sensuously spooky movie set in an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War. The Devil's Backbone simmers with the sort of soulful sociopolitical valence that thrills most self-respecting NPR listeners, with the additional satisfying bonus of being utterly shriek-inducing.

Even by Hollywood standards, del Toro's first experience making a movie in the US -- when he was only 32 -- was legendarily dreadful. Already acclaimed in Mexico for early work like Cronos, he got squished by the heads of Miramax while filming 1997's Mimic. At that point, del Toro had had it, and he went to Spain to make his next several movies. Then he got roped into directing Blade II. Surprisingly, that helped restore his credibility. (It's a smart, hilarious take on the franchise.)

Guillermo del Toro's velvety filmmaking found wider acclaim a few years later, with his hits Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy. He's now working on the film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, scheduled to be released sometime in 2012.

Even though del Toro rules, and Hollywood should obviously let him do whatever he wants and give him gobs of money, Fox rejected his outline for a vampire procedural television show. They wanted him to make it lighter. Instead, del Toro decided to turn it into a novel -- a trilogy, in fact, and he teamed up with Chuck Hogan, a video-store clerk turned best-selling novelist. The rights should be scooped up any minute, if they haven't been already.

Del Toro is one of the most charming people I've ever interviewed, for this story right before the first Hellboy movie came out. He's the type who can, in just a few breaths, comfortably and unpretentiously reference Kierkegaard and monster comics. I've never forgotten one thing he said in the piece. "Anything that you want to learn about being human you can learn in monster movies. And anything that you want to learn about monsters you can learn in the evening news."