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This is another reread, so I'm moving through it fairly quickly. It is faster paced than The Strain (for which this post will have spoilers). The vampires have moved on various world cities to establish "ground zero" points. Ironically, in New York the Master has chosen below Ground Zero itself as his lair. By now, readers will know that the first book's title describes the virus which animates the vampires.
Of the characters, I find the subplot of Eldritch Palmer, whose parents must have been cruel people, the least interesting. He's the billionaire who has orchestrated the fall of the human race in return for immortality, though at one grisly point, he does actually wonder what it will be like to live as an immortal man who survives by eating other humans.
Most interesting to me are the desperate survival attempts of the other characters, led by Abraham Setrakian, the Holocaust survivor who witnessed another horror within the camp he survived. It's not only his first name that evokes Abraham van Helsing. The others include Ephraim Goodweather, the CDC director whose ex-wife Kelly has fallen victim to the virus and now hunts their son Zack to bring him into the undead fold, and also Fet, the pest controller with unexpected talents in the area of vampire eradication.
The hunting ground is New York, which no longer belongs to humanity, though they seem slow to pick up on this fact. It has turned out to be a battle not so much between the Master and humanity, whom he regards as little more than cockroaches, even Palmer, but between this renegade vampire and others who believe he has broken the rules.
As a middle book in a trilogy, it is pretty good, though it does end on a cliffhanger which I have remained on for quite some time. I've only recently discovered that the third book is out and yes, I have ordered it today from Book Depository. You can't get a paperback for under $15 anywhere in Australia these days.
Of the characters, I find the subplot of Eldritch Palmer, whose parents must have been cruel people, the least interesting. He's the billionaire who has orchestrated the fall of the human race in return for immortality, though at one grisly point, he does actually wonder what it will be like to live as an immortal man who survives by eating other humans.
Most interesting to me are the desperate survival attempts of the other characters, led by Abraham Setrakian, the Holocaust survivor who witnessed another horror within the camp he survived. It's not only his first name that evokes Abraham van Helsing. The others include Ephraim Goodweather, the CDC director whose ex-wife Kelly has fallen victim to the virus and now hunts their son Zack to bring him into the undead fold, and also Fet, the pest controller with unexpected talents in the area of vampire eradication.
The hunting ground is New York, which no longer belongs to humanity, though they seem slow to pick up on this fact. It has turned out to be a battle not so much between the Master and humanity, whom he regards as little more than cockroaches, even Palmer, but between this renegade vampire and others who believe he has broken the rules.
As a middle book in a trilogy, it is pretty good, though it does end on a cliffhanger which I have remained on for quite some time. I've only recently discovered that the third book is out and yes, I have ordered it today from Book Depository. You can't get a paperback for under $15 anywhere in Australia these days.