The Night Eternal is the third and final installment of Chuck Hogan and Guilermo del Toro's horror trilogy about vampires taking over the world. In all honesty, I have about had my fill of paranormal/vampire stories. This trilogy, however, is worth the read. It's been described as "Bram Stoker meets Stephen King meets Michael Crichton" and I think that's pretty darned accurate.

A word of warning: these are NOT stand-alone books! You must read the trilogy in order....the first book is The Strain and that was followed by The Fall.

Okay, now that I've made that perfectly clear, I can tell you why I enjoyed these books. While there are elements of horror (who wouldn't be horrified by gross vampires?), it is presented in a scientific form. The authors' conception of vampires in this novel is creepy, realistic, and based in science....ewww....

When the vampires manage to take over the world, the post-apocalypse world is a dark and scary place. A few bands of survivors, including our protagonists, have decided to fight back. Each of these characters are fully developed...you understand their fears, their loves, and what it is they are fighting for.

Lots of action (hey, there are lots of vampires to kill), but also a lot of thinking as our heroes try to figure out where the vampires came from and how to best rid the world of them.

Difficult to explain, but I really liked these books, despite the fact that they don't fall within any of my normal genres. Very much recommended, even if your tastes in reading don't normally run in this direction.