The Fall is book 2 of Guillermo del Toro (yes, the acclaimed film director) and Chuck Hogan's "The Strain" trilogy, about an apocryphal swarm of vampires getting unleashed by a Master. The first book, [b:The Strain|6065215|The Strain (The Strain Trilogy, #1)|Guillermo del Toro|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1326225354s/6065215.jpg|6241525], was a good, creepy read, with a modern take on the vampiric strain and The Fall continues with the story.

Slowly, people are beginning to realize that, yes, there are vampires. And the human race is in the middle of war between the Old Masters and a new, upstart, Master, who wants to rule the world and just use humans as a feeding farm. Eph Goodweather, who used to head up the Centers for Disease Control but is now a pariah, is battling the plague, while fending off his vampire ex-wife who is trying to get their son.

He is helped in this battle by Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian and exterminator Vasiliy Fet, as well as his coworker and lover and a band of gangsters recruited by the Old Masters to be on their side. The war swings back and forth, as they all try to get their hands on an ancient text that promises redemption.

Yeah, it is pretty wild. del Toro and Hogan do a good job of giving a solid rationale for the vampire, and by using some back stories of Setrakian, they fill in the recent history of the battle. The story moves forward at a frenetic pace and ends just when things look darkest.

I have to admit to not entirely following some of the plot lines. There is this story arc of a wickedly evil mega-rich guy who makes a pact with the vampire and uses his wealth to help them out. It all feels a little forced though and, to be honest, I am not sure why we care where the vampire gets his money.

I also thought the vampire hordes were too easy to kill. The gangs run through hundreds of them at once, swinging their silver swords and flashing them with UV rays, hardly ever losing a single one. And it isn't clear why, like many vampire books (yeah, I've been reading too many), some end up dead and some end up as vampires.

And I'm also a little tired of the tropes that keep vampires at bay. The authors go to great lengths to explain the vampire "illness" in modern terms, and then talk about how some things from legend don't work (garlic and crosses in this case) yet some things do - silver and they can't go across water. It just feels so arbitrary sometimes.

But, in the end, it was good enough to get me to want to read book 3, [b:The Night Eternal|6945530|The Night Eternal (The Strain Trilogy, #3)|Guillermo del Toro|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327932900s/6945530.jpg|6965593]. Which sounds appropriate, because things seem pretty bleak by the end of The Fall. So bleak, I can't even imagine where they are going with it! But I'll be sure to check it out.