This is the second book in the trilogy, following
The Strain. It's definitely a vampire apocalypse, with the head vampire, the Master being of the disgusting and scary variety, as opposed to the Byronic vampires so popular of late. And, if you like your vampires apocalyptic, viral and disgusting, then it's a pretty engaging read. What's fascinating to me, though, is the way that Holocaust figures in the novels. This isn't really a vampire apocalypse, it's a new Holocaust and toward the end of this novel we learn that the planned apocalypse for all humanity was inspired or at least brought into fruition more quickly by the Holocaust: "Man's own inhumanity to man had whet the monster's appetite for havoc. We had, through our atrocities, demonstrated our own doom to the ultimate nemesis, welcoming him as though through prophesy" (286). I know the Holocaust is a thematic touchpoint in
The Addiction (1995). I'm wondering where else it appears in vampire fiction besides Sarah Jane Stratford's new
The Midnight Guardian, which I'm waiting for in the mail.