The Fall by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The Fall is del Toro and Hogan's second novel in The Strain trilogy. It picks up from where the first novel - er, The Strain - left off, with a small band of human survivors valiantly battling against the vampire menace that's now threatening the whole world.

Dr Ephraim Goodweather (sidenote: I love the names in this. I really, really do), formerly of the CDC and now  a rogue on the run has banded together with a small motley crew of humans to try and ward off the coming darkness.

It's a pretty bleak situation for the humans as vampires  just spread like a virus throughout New York  and, presumably, the rest of the world.

I like this series. I like it a whole lot. Because it's bleak and there really is very, very little hope, even though Eph and co keep striving against the Master (a rogue Ancient vampire who's responsible for unleashing the plague, as it were), doing their best to keep a little light shining.

del Toro's unusual  creative point-of-view is all over The Strain and The Fall, and it's backed up by a solid structure, all of which served to make me want to keep reading.

It is a little bleak and unrelenting, and there are some terribly heartbreaking elements to The Fall, which truly made me wonder whether the humans were going to prevail.

I'm still wondering, actually ...

8/10 That movie that you've watched 100 times and you never get tired of