The Fall

Book Two of the Strain Trilogy

By: Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan

Narrated by: Daniel Oreskes

“A cross between The Hot Zone and ’Salem’s Lot.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“I cannot wait to see where Del Toro and Hogan take us next.”
—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of Bloodline

The wait is over! Guillermo del Toro, one of Hollywood’s most popular and imaginative storytellers (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) and Hammett Award-winning thriller writer Chuck Hogan (Prince of Thieves) return with The Fall—the second blood-chilling volume in their critically acclaimed, New York Times bestselling Strain Trilogy. The Fall picks up where The Strain left off—with a vampiric infection spreading like wildfire across America as a small band of heroes struggles to save the dwindling human race from the vampire plague. Horror fiction and dark fantasy fans will be swept up in this epic story that bestselling author Nelson DeMille describes as “Bram Stoker meets Stephen King meets Michael Crichton.”

Book 2 and a Filler

The last two hours save this book. The last two hours are intellectually stimulating. Toro and Hogan bring vampires into the 21st century with modern day technology and modern day theories. They also set up what may be a very exciting conclusion to the trilogy. The last two hours make the book worth buying.

The first hour has some good old fashioned vampire scariness and throughout the book are scattered some gory action scenes. What keeps the book from going five stars is that a lot of the book is filler. Boring scenes that only serve to set up the third book and to make this book novel length. The first book was about a half a star better. This book has conspiracies, Nazi, The Book and a really scary addition, The Feelers. I found the Feelers to be especially creepy.

I did have some questions about the silver. First I know this is not the same as all vampire stories, even though they stayed true to mirrors, masters, daylight, etc, but isn't silver suppose to kill werewolves? Then after you have accepted silver has a weapon, they sure came up with a lot of it in the forms they needed pretty quick. They shot a lot of silver nails and I don't think that is a top seller in most hardware stores. I also felt it unrealistic that masses of people could be killed in New York City and the rest of the world totally ignorant of it. What happened to journalism?

The narrator had a way of going from a quiet scene to a action scene with no variation in his voice. Your mind may be wondering due to the filler nature of the story and then you hear an attack is going on, but your wondering when did the attack start and did I miss something of interest?

Remember the last two hours are really good.

Amazing Story

I wasn’t sure about this series. Maybe because I saw the TV version first. I am glad I decided to risk a credit. Well written story that pulls you in a paragraph at a time! Performance? Wish I could give 10 stars ⭐️ Can’t wait to listen to the final installment.

Not as Good as the First Book

Book Two of the Strain Trilogy, "The Fall", is not as good as the first but better than the last.

Del Toro and Hogan have created an interesting take on the vampire legend.
The backstory deserved more attention. The interludes give us an overview, but the details in Setrakian's and Sardu's experiences would have been much more entertaining.

I became bored with the characters pretty quickly in this installment. There is some introduction of other plot twists with dubious foundations. I found the attempted link with Biblical narrative a great big stretch, and kind of out of the blue. "hey, let's throw this in there." "Yeah, okay".

Well, wait. What's this, an ancient book? The Occido Lumen? This could be interesting. But the "book" just ended up being a big let down. It was built up so much that I expected some great revelation about the "stragori". But, alas, no. Just a treasure map to the Master's origin dirt. How did the Master know where all the Ancients origins were but the Master's is coded into some secret book that ... well let's just say ... is not readily legible by vampire kind.

All in all, book two was a less intriguing book than the first. Just -eh!

The narrator was different than the first but just as good.

Its a battle to get through

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

The story progresses as expected but the reader kills it for me. He's flat, monotone & mispronounces names. I find myself zoning out as I listen and have to rewind. I'm about halfway through and I'm forcing myself to finish it so as not to waste a credit.

Great second book

Absolutely cannot wait to listen to the final book. It is going to be epic.