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Book Review of The Strain (Strain, Bk 1)

The Strain (Strain, Bk 1)
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At New York's JFK Airport, Flight 753 from Berlin, Germany, arrives and suddenly stops dead. All shades are drawn and there is no communication with the pilot's or with the passengers. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of a CDC rapid-response team investigating biological threats, is called upon to enter the plane.


He encounters a scene that one can only imagine. All passengers, pilots, flight attendants are dead on the plane. There are no signs of abuse, guns, knives, or any other sort of killing instruments. People are still in their seats, some holding hands.

The bodies are removed from the plane and brought to area hospitals and morgues for family members to claim. It is discovered that there are four people who are still alive, but without any real memories of the trauma that they have been through.

As this is occuring, we are introduced to a gentleman who runs a pawn shop in New York, Setrakian, who is a survivor of the Holocaust and has knowledge of the entity that will be pervading New York with this accident with the plane. He has been chasing this particular beast since being incarcerated at Treblinka and escaping with his life.

Inside the plane is discovered a very large case that is filled with dirt. That case disappears from the plane with no knowledge of its contents.

We are taken through a whirlwind of knowledge of the beast that has been unleashed on New York by the mechanisms of a very rich individual who is very power-hungry and knows that the beast can not come outside of his continent without an invitation to cross running water.

This book would be better as a movie. Very slow at the beginning and then moves too fast to the conclusion. I got very comfortable with learning about the families and the histories of the characters, but then things were just thrown in and made to make the conclusion as it was. Really believe that Guillermo Del Toro should stay with movie-making. The language really lends itself to visual and not necessarily to reading