The Night Eternal

The Night Eternal is a 2011 vampire horror novel by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. It is the final novel in The Strain Trilogy beginning with The Strain and continuing with The Fall.

This article is about the book. For the At the Gates song, see At War with Reality.
The Night Eternal
Hardcover edition
Author
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreHorror novel
PublisherWilliam Morrow and Company
Publication date
October 25, 2011
Media typePrint, audio
Pages371
ISBN0061558273
Preceded byThe Fall 

Plot

Two years have passed since the vampires, led by the Master, used atomic weapons to create a nuclear winter, which blocked the sun and allowed the vampires to move freely, except for a few hours a day. The vampires restructured society as a police state. The strongest and the most influential humans were exterminated and those who were spared were made slaves. The weak were forced into camps to harvest their blood.

A few survivors manage to resist the vampire occupation. Epidemiologist Dr Ephraim Goodweather grows distant from his friends. The Master, occupying the body of rock star Gabriel Bolivar, adopted Goodweather's son Zach as his protégé and is grooming the boy to be his next host body. Goodweather's lover, Dr Nora Martinez, left him for exterminator Vasiliy Fet. Following the death of his friend Abraham Setrakian, Fet struggles to decipher the Occido Lumen, a tome holding the key to defeating the Master. He is aided by Mr Quinlan, the vengeful half-vampire who was created when the Master infected his then-pregnant human mother.

Flashbacks to biblical times reveal the origins of the vampire race. The seven Ancients, including the Master, arose from Ozryel - the archangel of death. Ozryel was one of the three angels that God sent to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness. Ozryel was overpowered by blood lust while he destroyed the cities, being particularly enthralled by blood itself. When committing other atrocities necessary for cleansing the world he had not actually glimpsed blood prior to destroying these cities. Soon after, he betrayed and attacked Michael, in order to drink his fellow archangel's blood. Appalled by Ozryel's actions, God punished him by having the other archangels cut his body into seven pieces and scattering them across the Earth. Over time, Ozryel's blood leaked from the burial sites and became sentient, spawning the Ancient Ones. The Master was the last to spawn, from Ozryel's throat.

Goodweather deciphers the Occido Lumen and determines that the Master originated on one of the Thousand Islands located in the St Lawrence River. The survivors detonate a nuclear weapon on the island, killing Goodweather, Zach, Mr Quinlan, and the Master. After the explosion, Nora and Vasily witness a reunion of the purified Ozryel with Gabriel and Michael, who had come to take Ozryel back to Heaven. The return was only made possible by Mr Quinlan, who brought the Ancients' ashes with him after following the instructions he read in the Lumen. After the Master's death, the remaining vampires disintegrate and the surviving humans are able to rebuild society.

Reception

Stephen King wrote: "Although there is a certain amount of dispensable hugger-mugger about vampires in Rome and archangels located in Sodom,the main attractions here is the resistance fighters' fierce dedication to their cause. Heroes of tragic dimension are rare in popular fiction, but Goodweather fills the void perfectly. [...] The action is non-stop and the fantasy element is anchored in enough satisfying detail to make it believable. [... ] There's something about seeing vampires massing for an attack in a Wendy's parking lot, an act making them more real."[1] The San Francisco Chronicle's Alan Cheuse wrote: "The novel comes to us in a weird, loose style in which multiple view points proliferate, constantly shifting and re-forming the story, resembling nothing less than montage of fear-making moments that we love to hate."[2]

Adaptations

Comic books

Writer David Lapham and artist Mike Huddleston[3] adapted the novel into an 11-issue story arc for the eponymous comic-book series from Dark Horse Comics.[4]

Issue Release Date Trade Paperback Collection Hardcover Collection
1 August 20, 2014 The Strain — Volume 5:
The Night Eternal
May 6, 2015
ISBN 978-1616556389		 The Strain—Book Three
The Night Eternal
May 25, 2016
ISBN 978-1-61655-977-9
2 September 17, 2014
3 October 15, 2014
4 November 19, 2014
5 January 21, 2015
6 February 18, 2015
7 March 18, 2015 The Strain — Volume 6:
The Night Eternal
December 2, 2015
ISBN 978-1616557874
8 April 15, 2015
9 May 20, 2015
10 June 17, 2015
11 July 15, 2015
12 August 19, 2015

Television series
Main article: The Strain (TV series)

Executive producer and showrunner Carlton Cuse adapted the novel into the eponymous television series from FX.

gollark: They also have stupidly high-throughput cores with 8-way SMT.
gollark: It's basically the only modern performant platform which you can run usably without proprietary firmware.
gollark: They could probably compile everything (except working Nvidia drivers), it would just be slow and annoying.
gollark: https://github.com/open-ce/open-ce mentions PowerPC support, which I think supports this interpretation.
gollark: It probably can, but not all of them will have been compiled for it, as it's not widely used.

References
  1. Toro, Guillermo Del; Hogan, Chuck (26 June 2012). "The Night Eternal". Amazon. Harper. Retrieved January 22, 2013.
  2. Cheuse, Alan (5 November 2011). "'The Night Eternal,' by Del Toro and Hogan: review". SFGate. Retrieved 22 January 2013.
  3. "Comic-Con 2011: Guillermo del Toro, Tom Morello, P.C. Cast Doing Dark Horse Comics This Fall". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
  4. "New Dark Horse Comics by Guillermo del Toro, Tom Morello, P.C. Cast Comic-Con". Comics Alliance. Archived from the original on 5 November 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
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