The Fall is the second installment in the vampire trilogy by Academy Award winning director Guillermo del Toro and bestselling thriller novelist Chuck Hogan. The two authors had readers on the edge of their seats with the first book in the series, The Strain, and this second book reads with the same spine-tingling suspense mixed with gritty vampire horror as the first.
Breaking from the recent flow of the vampire genre which often casts blood-drinkers as romantically inclined yet tormented soulful heroes, del Toro and Hogan return to the image of vampire as parasitic monster with a nearly insatiable thirst for human blood. In this new trilogy, the vampire population spreads like a virus, threatening world domination and the total subjugation of humanity as an animal food source.
"The Kelly-thing stood poised on the edge of the roof, indifferent to the suffering city all around her. She knew only thirst. A craving, for blood and for her blood kind. This was the frenzy that compelled her; a virus knows only one thing: that it must infect."
The Fall picks up right on the edge of the precipice where The Strain left off, with the entire city of New York threatened by the vampire predators, an example that mirrors itself in other major cities across the world. The Fall focuses on the struggle between the circle of Ancient elitist vampires and the rebellious New World vampires led by an Ancient bent on seizing control.
Our unlikely group of heroes is comprised of Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, his young son Zack, his Center for Disease Control colleague Dr. Nora Martinez, World War Two concentration camp survivor and lifelong vampire hunter Abraham Setrakian, and a resourceful New York exterminator known as Fet. In this second book, the group are joined by a handful of vigilante gang members recruited by a group of Old War vampires to fight the New World strain.
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