I want my $0 back
I mentioned a while back that I got a free copy of The Strain, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, through a give-away at SF Signal. I've finished it. It is one of the worst books I have ever read - but maybe I'm the wrong reader for it, because I don't read the action thrillers that this thing is modeled on.
I suspect that a lot of readers are just happy that these vampires are not Twilight vampires. Indeed, they are unmistakably fiendish, murderous, grotesque. They even defecate as they drain you of blood! While I sympathize with the "finally, GORE!" crowd, these vampires aren't really vampires either. They're more like zombies. Can you imagine Lucy shambling down the road in a bathrobe, flailing mindlessly for anything that's got a vein available? No. Vampires are supposed to have some degree of charisma, some amount of style - I'm the person who thinks Herzog's Nosferatu is one of the most gorgeous and romantic movies ever. They are not supposed to be a sexless horde. Yes, The Strain's monsters suck blood. But they fit the zombie category better. Same with the vampires in the I Am Legend movie.*
Onto the thing that really bothered me. More than the bad writing and unconvincing battle scenes (several Amazon reviewers mention the improbability of an 80-year-old Holocaust survivor with broken hands being the kick-ass action hero that he is), more than the repetition of vampires attacking their neighbors and turtle-slow pacing: I accurately predicted what would happen to the main characters.
The main character (MC) is a "handsome," "genius" CDC dude who's in the middle of a divorce. He really, really, really wants to be around his son Zach, who is just like him, brilliant and intense, etc. Unfortunately, his beautiful ex-wife (who was the one calling MC a "handsome" "genius"), who never understood him and was always second to his work, wants custody of Zach. And she has a new boyfriend who MC thinks is trying to replace him in Zach's life. New boyfriend is pathetic (works at Sears) and sniveling. Also, MC has a new love interest, who also works at the CDC (has the potential to understand his brilliance!) and gets along with Zach.
So I'm like, hmm. Clearly new boyfriend is going to die a horrible death. Clearly Zach is going to end up with his rightful father. If not for the new love interest, ex-wife would also end up with the MC, but given the new love interest, she will also die to make way for the MC's new and improved family. I knew this because it is the plot offered up by disaster movies such as 2012 and War of the Worlds**.
I was exactly right. Not only did new boyfriend turn into a vampire, providing the MC with the opportunity to stab him repeatedly (I think this was actually narrated in the book as stabstabstab), but the ex-wife was turned into a vampire who now wants to steal away Zach, the bitch! One of the final lines of the book? "The custody battle for Zach was not over." She escapes to presumably reappear in the second book, as the MC laments that she will "haunt Zach forever." And the girlfriend? She stays behind in the final battle to take care of Zach.
This kind of thing really bothers me, and I'm trying to figure out why. For one I'm not sure about a custody battle subsuming the end of human life in New York City. And on a basic level, it seems unrealistic as hell. Disasters - or genocides - are not typically wish fulfillment scenarios (imagine if instead of vampires, people were being annihilated by an army instead; imagine the outrage that would ensue from trotting out genocide as an excuse for the main character to get whatever he wants [assuming he's seen as righteous and not a war profiteer, of course]). Then there's the nasty little "why are you so special that the disaster works out aces for you, when everyone else is dying? why should I be happy for you?" feeling, like it just doesn't seem fair, or justified. But of course who am I to criticize what someone else wants to do with their story? Why do I even want stories to be fair/justified? I wouldn't care if the MC wasn't also this heroic figure that we're supposed to cheer for - I love to hate Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22, for example - but this book is written in such a way that there's no negotiating what side you're on, no unreliable narrator, no perspective except for the MC's. Maybe I'd prefer it if the MC was scheming to use the vampire apocalypse to get Zach, get rid of his ex-wife, impress his girlfriend. Etc. Sure, he'd be a dickface. But he'd be more interesting. It would seem more accurate. The outcome would not be inexplicable.
And then there's the whole Hooray for Patriarchy aspect of it all. Mothers are pretty much all doomed in The Strain, and by doomed I mean "turned evil." There are two female characters of any importance - the ex-wife and the girlfriend, both defined entirely by their relationship to the MC - and the ex-wife goes bad, of course, while the girlfriend is billed as this sort of tough, smart counterpart to the MC but is really just the MC's toadie and on-call baby sitter. She mostly stands back and screams in horror. Two other female characters at least appear repeatedly: a blood-sucking lawyer turned vampire who eats her neighbor's kids (and then hunts her own kids) and just wants to get rich off lawsuits, and an unstable OCD-afflicted housewife who kills herself when her husband becomes a vampire (because she needs him to survive). Contrast with the only vampire who shows any degree of complexity and morality - OCD housewife's husband, who nobly chains himself up in the shed so that he won't hurt his family. D'awww. Maybe this would make a good Father's Day present or something. Certainly not a good Mother's Day present. A father's love is protective, self-sacrificing, virtuous. A mother's love is possessive, harmful/deadly, frightening. What the fuck, you know?
* I suspect that somebody who's well-versed in the I Am Legend story could argue that it influenced The Strain, but that somebody is not me.
** To give W of the Worlds credit, though, it doesn't kill off mom's new boyfriend (or mom, but mom only dies if there's someone to take her place anyway). I also appreciate W of the Worlds for clearly showing Tom Cruise's character's flaws - i.e., showing why his wife got a divorce, why he doesn't have custody. In the case of 2012, though, mom's new boyfriend actually steps aside and then dies so that the "real family" can be together.
I suspect that a lot of readers are just happy that these vampires are not Twilight vampires. Indeed, they are unmistakably fiendish, murderous, grotesque. They even defecate as they drain you of blood! While I sympathize with the "finally, GORE!" crowd, these vampires aren't really vampires either. They're more like zombies. Can you imagine Lucy shambling down the road in a bathrobe, flailing mindlessly for anything that's got a vein available? No. Vampires are supposed to have some degree of charisma, some amount of style - I'm the person who thinks Herzog's Nosferatu is one of the most gorgeous and romantic movies ever. They are not supposed to be a sexless horde. Yes, The Strain's monsters suck blood. But they fit the zombie category better. Same with the vampires in the I Am Legend movie.*
Onto the thing that really bothered me. More than the bad writing and unconvincing battle scenes (several Amazon reviewers mention the improbability of an 80-year-old Holocaust survivor with broken hands being the kick-ass action hero that he is), more than the repetition of vampires attacking their neighbors and turtle-slow pacing: I accurately predicted what would happen to the main characters.
The main character (MC) is a "handsome," "genius" CDC dude who's in the middle of a divorce. He really, really, really wants to be around his son Zach, who is just like him, brilliant and intense, etc. Unfortunately, his beautiful ex-wife (who was the one calling MC a "handsome" "genius"), who never understood him and was always second to his work, wants custody of Zach. And she has a new boyfriend who MC thinks is trying to replace him in Zach's life. New boyfriend is pathetic (works at Sears) and sniveling. Also, MC has a new love interest, who also works at the CDC (has the potential to understand his brilliance!) and gets along with Zach.
So I'm like, hmm. Clearly new boyfriend is going to die a horrible death. Clearly Zach is going to end up with his rightful father. If not for the new love interest, ex-wife would also end up with the MC, but given the new love interest, she will also die to make way for the MC's new and improved family. I knew this because it is the plot offered up by disaster movies such as 2012 and War of the Worlds**.
I was exactly right. Not only did new boyfriend turn into a vampire, providing the MC with the opportunity to stab him repeatedly (I think this was actually narrated in the book as stabstabstab), but the ex-wife was turned into a vampire who now wants to steal away Zach, the bitch! One of the final lines of the book? "The custody battle for Zach was not over." She escapes to presumably reappear in the second book, as the MC laments that she will "haunt Zach forever." And the girlfriend? She stays behind in the final battle to take care of Zach.
This kind of thing really bothers me, and I'm trying to figure out why. For one I'm not sure about a custody battle subsuming the end of human life in New York City. And on a basic level, it seems unrealistic as hell. Disasters - or genocides - are not typically wish fulfillment scenarios (imagine if instead of vampires, people were being annihilated by an army instead; imagine the outrage that would ensue from trotting out genocide as an excuse for the main character to get whatever he wants [assuming he's seen as righteous and not a war profiteer, of course]). Then there's the nasty little "why are you so special that the disaster works out aces for you, when everyone else is dying? why should I be happy for you?" feeling, like it just doesn't seem fair, or justified. But of course who am I to criticize what someone else wants to do with their story? Why do I even want stories to be fair/justified? I wouldn't care if the MC wasn't also this heroic figure that we're supposed to cheer for - I love to hate Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22, for example - but this book is written in such a way that there's no negotiating what side you're on, no unreliable narrator, no perspective except for the MC's. Maybe I'd prefer it if the MC was scheming to use the vampire apocalypse to get Zach, get rid of his ex-wife, impress his girlfriend. Etc. Sure, he'd be a dickface. But he'd be more interesting. It would seem more accurate. The outcome would not be inexplicable.
And then there's the whole Hooray for Patriarchy aspect of it all. Mothers are pretty much all doomed in The Strain, and by doomed I mean "turned evil." There are two female characters of any importance - the ex-wife and the girlfriend, both defined entirely by their relationship to the MC - and the ex-wife goes bad, of course, while the girlfriend is billed as this sort of tough, smart counterpart to the MC but is really just the MC's toadie and on-call baby sitter. She mostly stands back and screams in horror. Two other female characters at least appear repeatedly: a blood-sucking lawyer turned vampire who eats her neighbor's kids (and then hunts her own kids) and just wants to get rich off lawsuits, and an unstable OCD-afflicted housewife who kills herself when her husband becomes a vampire (because she needs him to survive). Contrast with the only vampire who shows any degree of complexity and morality - OCD housewife's husband, who nobly chains himself up in the shed so that he won't hurt his family. D'awww. Maybe this would make a good Father's Day present or something. Certainly not a good Mother's Day present. A father's love is protective, self-sacrificing, virtuous. A mother's love is possessive, harmful/deadly, frightening. What the fuck, you know?
* I suspect that somebody who's well-versed in the I Am Legend story could argue that it influenced The Strain, but that somebody is not me.
** To give W of the Worlds credit, though, it doesn't kill off mom's new boyfriend (or mom, but mom only dies if there's someone to take her place anyway). I also appreciate W of the Worlds for clearly showing Tom Cruise's character's flaws - i.e., showing why his wife got a divorce, why he doesn't have custody. In the case of 2012, though, mom's new boyfriend actually steps aside and then dies so that the "real family" can be together.