Audiobook Review of “The Strain”

Narrated by: Ron Perlman

Publisher: Harper Audio

My Review

The Story: The Strain takes off when a Boeing 777 touches down at JFK and suddenly goes completely dark. After everyone inside is found dead a call is placed to Dr. Eph Goodweather with the CDC. Dr. Goodweather spearheads the mission to learn the cause of the incident and contain it.

At times the investigation seems a little slow… I mean come on! You just found this huge undocumented coffin with several inches of soil in the bottom of it on board the airplane that landed with a bunch of dead people in it. Dead people who just happened to be drained of blood! Can’t you figure this one out Doc? Anybody? I kept expecting someone to at least toss the vampire idea out there during the initial investigation but it never happened. They really didn’t have a clue what they were dealing with until Abraham Setrakian comes on the scene.

Aside from the blundering investigation, the novel moves at a pretty brisk pace.

Overall, The Strain is a face paced vampire thriller packed with creatures that might just be able to rip Edward Cullen’s head off and crap down his neck. Unfortunately I mean that literally… the vampires in The Strain have a bit of a gastrointestinal problem. More on that later.

There are lots of stuff to love in this book. Some traditional vampire lore mixed with some things that are completely new. Lots of action and suspense mixed with a new biomedical twist.

Audio Production: Ron Perlman was great! I have no complaints at all with his narration. In fact I’m excited about reading “City of Thieves” based off a friends recommendation and the fact that he is the narrator. The only problem I had with the audio production was the music that was inserted between chapters. It got really annoying and didn’t enhance the atmosphere that I assume it was there for. If anything I felt that it tended to diffuse some of the suspense that built up at the end of each chapter.

Overall: I totally enjoyed 99% of this book. However I was a little turned off by the vampires themselves. I didn’t care for the vampire “stinger” or how the vampires defecated everywhere when they fed. Sexy right? I was also a little disappointed with one part of the book where an opportunity to destroy “The Master” seemed to be completely squandered away. Of course, it probably wouldn’t make for much of a trilogy if they killed off the main antagonist and destroyed the viral strain in part one of said trilogy. All that being said I still had a great time listening to this book. It had all the suspense of “The Passage” packed into a much tighter novel. (23 1/2 hrs shorter… By the way I loved “The Passage” even though it was so long. See my review here: The Passage)

The Strain ends on a high note with some mysterious goings on that really make me look forward to the sequel.