I totally called the ending. About a third of the way through, I looked over at Hubby and said...* well, I won't say hear what I said, because I was right. Every bit of it. I think that is my only problem with the book, about a third of the way through, I predicted the end. I'm hoping Hubby doesn't remember what I told him when we start watching the second season of the The Strain television series on Sunday, thought the series has not been exactly following the novels.
The characters kept me hooked on The Strain trilogy. Eph and his son were a unique pair. I couldn't have predicted what happened to Zack. Eph wasn't the perfect hero either, he didn't do what we would expect and at the beginning of The Night Eternal we find out what happened with him and Nora. "The girl" isn't just a damsel either. She's badass. She kicks ass and will not be left behind. The butter-knife shank is one of my favourite things, and something I'll have to remember in case of the apocalypse.
As I read about how the Master destroyed the possibility for revolt, taking out world leaders, the strong and willful, how he got rid of "the news", took control of the internet, I thought, this is the way to destroy the world. The ash cloud was one thing, but the Master didn't even bother with trying to subjugate Presidents and Prime Ministers, any royal family, anyone who showed a strong will, he just killed them all. Why waste the time breaking anyone? He had a herd. He had his B- farms, the tastiest of the humans, and then the average person. By giving them the apparent return to normalcy, he could control the herd better. There were jobs and television, perpetual re-runs were better than blank sets. People lived in their homes. There was only a couple hours of sunlight a day and black rain, but they had the shell of the old world. The Master had a great plan.
I wonder how accurate the atmospheric nuclear fallout was. I should look it up. Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan thanked Dr. Seth Richardson for help with lore, likely in creating the Lumen, but who helped them with the post-nuclear planet? The biblical lore was interesting (and so was the space station). I wonder how much of that they made up and how much was from the actual story of Sodom and Gomorrah. I'm going to have to look that one up too. I really connected to the plot of The Night Eternal, it was so unlike anything else I've read lately and different enough from The Strain and The Fall, that I had to know what happened. (Thank you, for the epilogue.) If you want a good, real, horror series, then pick up The Strain series. The Strain, The Fall and The Night Eternal do not disappoint.
*This is what I basically said, but I didn't want to include it in the rest of the post because SPOILERS. I wanted to write it down though, because I was right - "Everyone is toast. In the end, it'll be Fet and Nora. Everyone, Eph, his kid, all dead. I mean, other people in the world will be alive, but from the characters, they're all gone but those two."
