The Strain
Strain Trilogy, No. 1

By Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan 

        When a plane lands in JFK and all the passengers and crew (but for four confused survivors) are found dead in their seats, Ephraim Goodweather and her colleague, and sometime lover, Nora of the CDC are called to investigate the case. What they find is baffling.  
Only Abraham Setrakian, a retired professor from Romania hiding as a pawnbroker, suspects the truth as he has before encountered something similar during his long life chasing a monster he met at Treblinka.

Setrakian warns Eph that the bodies must be destroyed. His advice is ignored though, and the next day the bodies are gone. As for the survivors, all but one escape the hospital's surveillance. The one that stays transforms in an impossible way that prompts Eph and Nora to look for Setrakian and ask his advice.
The changes, Setrakian explains make the humans into vampires and these vampires from the plane are the first step in an exponential transformation that will convert the entire human race into vampires.
Confronted with the impossible happenings around them, Eph and Nora join forces with Setrakian in his search for the monster that controls the vampires. The future of the human race is in their hands.

I read The Strain because I loved Guillermo del Toro’s Pan's Labyrinth, and although the scenes in the book do have a cinematic quality that would work well on the screen, The Strain is far from being in the same level as Pan's Labyrinth. It is a fast read and the authors have created an intriguing premise for the vampire/virus origin that works well, but the writing is barely functional and lacks the poetry that made Pan's labyrinth magical.

The Strain will have two sequels and I do want to read them to know what happens. But while we wait, can somebody explain to me why do these vampires want to eliminate the human race when we are their prey? What are they going to eat when we are gone?

Just wondering.