The Passage: A Novel (Book One of The Passage Trilogy) Mass Market Paperback – July 31, 2012

*** WARNING - MANY MANY SPOILERS BELOW!!!***I deliberately avoided reading much about this novel before I started it. As a result, many twists and turns of the plot took me by surprise. One of the biggest surprises though was external to the text; when I was halfway done with "The Passage", I read a brief review online that told me this was volume one of a trilogy. This was not a good surprise...The art of efficient narrative seems to be dead in popular literature. Even 766 pages apparently is simply not enough space to tell a story. The original version of King's "The Stand" (to which this book has been compared) clocked in at a bit less than 850 pages. The revised version (which is arguably less effective) is a bit over 1,100 pages. Yet somehow in that apparent golden era of American pop fiction, Mr. King could destroy civilization, juggle a cast of dozens, fight a supernatural war amongst the survivors, and tie things up in a semi-satisfactory manner in less than half of the projected page count that Mr. Cronin needs for his own attempt to follow a similar path. Why is this so? Well, maybe the roughly $3.5 Million the author Mr. Cronin received for a rather unprecedented advance on this trilogy has something to do with it. The author's own wordiness also plays a role, and finally, the author's efforts at creating some kind of grand epic scope for his plot are a factor. The money part is something I can't analyze in the scope of this review, but the questions of style and plotting can be more readily addressed.What do we have here? Think "The Stand" meets "Salem's Lot" or, better yet, imagine "I Am Legend" with metaphysics. Govt experiment to create army of vampire using South American mystery virus goes horribly awry and results in 43 million vampires in the USA who seem to be immortal. A few bands of humans are left in fortified camps around the country 100 years after the collapse, and the novel focuses on one girl, Amy, who is infected with a more benign form of the vamp virus that enables her to telepathically communicate with and sometimes control the vampire hordes. Amy meets up with a compound of survivors who are running out of battery power needed to keep the photophobic vamps at bay, and she joins their expedition to find missing members / supplies. More stuff happens and the nature of the mission changes (more below) but this is the crux of the plot. Now as to why this subject can't be exposited and resolved in 766 pages...First, Cronin makes it clear he is a literary type author concerned with the human condition. He is no mere horror writer. What does this mean? Well, if one were reading a typical psycho killer horror novel (think early Dean Koontz), some security guard guy in, say, the hospital the killer is stalking would get an axe in the head. We would learn the guard's name is say Bob, and maybe we would find out he liked candy bars and had sore feet. Then, whoosh, axe comes down, head goes flying, goodbye Bob. Now in a Cronin style literary opus, this would not do. Instead, we will learn about Guard Bob's life history and childhood. We will learn of his strained relationship with his parents, of his difficult marriage, of his aspirations to be a better man that he is, of his thoughts on life, and the meaning of the universe. We will learn of Bob's hopes and fears, his strengths and flaws. And then, whoosh, the axe comes down, Bob's immensely well described psyche is separated from his body as his cranium goes flying, and we hear no more of Bob. Wasn't that latter sequence far more edifying and meaningful?Yes, one of the problems with Cronin is that he tells us far too much about very minor characters, most of whom are in the book for a really brief time and most of whom are basically cannon fodder for the vamps to rip apart. All the evil CIA / military guys, most of the survivor camp leaders, the vampire specimens, lots and lots of detail. I guess this detail gives Cronin, a formerly literary type novelist, who sold less than 100,000 copies combined of his first two NY Times Editor's Choice type books, a chance to feel he is still John Updike. Unfortunately, we the readers will, in most cases, not share the need to feel that we are reading Bonfire of the Vampiric Vanities, and we might therefore find ourselves wishing that things would move along a bit faster.Another more serious problem is that many of these finally crafted background vignettes are more than a bit clichéd. Anthony Carter, founding member of the Nice Guy Vampire Tribe, is exactly like that slow-witted gently falsely accused killer guy from King's "Green Mile" series. Particular scorn must be reserved for Amy's Mom's story which is basically an amazing series of clichéd mishaps about how hard it is for single moms in America, to the point where they simply must become homeless whores in order to survive, and then are forced to abandon their beloved unschooled daughters when the whore moms shoot an evil frat boy trying to kidnap them for purposes of gang rape. Whew! Even Victor Hugo might find that a bit contrived, and I guess the slightly future version of America that "The Passage" starts in lacks any sort of social services or public entitlement programs...The good news though is that most of the main characters are well-written and interesting. In the cases of the core cast, I for the most part felt they were realistically portrayed, interesting, and sympathetic. So Cronin can write well, and I did find myself caring about the fate of most of the main cast. However, much time and many pages were wasted on filler exposition on minor stock characters who would soon get their heads ripped off. That adds to page count and creates a trilogy where one need not exist.The other issue adding to the length of this book is the scope of the plot. Basically, as becomes clear, the solution to the "I Am Legend" type vampire plague is clarified to mean that our intrepid vampire hunters, with Amy at their core, must track down the other 11 vampire chiefs, who are the 11 convicts that were the original test subjects for the virus. The main nasty convict guy Babcock is defeated in the first book, which raises problems, as we know nothing of the other 10 (we already know all about Nice Vampire Carter who presumably will not be a threat and may even become an ally in an Expected Plot Twist) and so we know we have to endure another 10 sets of "origin stories" followed by multiple episodes of track em down and kill em. If this were a video game design, having to kill 11 bosses would be a bit much. As this is instead a series of books. we have to learn about each bosses' childhoods, careers of crime, hopes and aspirations, favorite bands and snack foods, etc. before we get to the numerous showdowns. This looks like utter tedium, and Cronin would have to truly pull out all the stops to make this in the least bit interesting over the course of another 1,500 pages.Cronin has a bold plan here, he does write well for the most part, he surprised me at a few points in the narrative, and that is why I am giving this four stars. He just might be able to mix things up and create a resolution to the series that is far more unexpected than what I've mapped out above. If he does not do this, or if he cuts too many corners with the world background he's already developed to speed things along, then this series will be a great disappointment full of featherbedding and boredom.Beyond these key issues, I have a few minor complaints that I will only touch on cursorily:1. The novel loses a lot of suspense when the survivors find Humvees with 50 cals and grenades and start tooling around the wastelands as if they were the Fourth Armored Recon Brigade. The book had a lot more tension to it when our heroes were creeping around with crossbows and torches. Predictably, all the firepower is then taken away from then in an ambush, then they restock again, etc. Another interesting question is how all this 100 year old stuff works so well, how the characters find a relatively constant supply of usable gas for the guzzling Hummers, etc.2. The degree of knowledge the second generation after the plague has is kind of spotty and unrealistic. After growing up in what is basically the 16th Century with wind turbines and floodlights, we would not expect our survivors to take so readily to driving and repairing Humvees, using laser guided rocket launchers, etc. However, we might expect them to know what basketball was, and we also might expect them to know who freakin' Noah is, a character in what is the most published book in American (indeed human) history. Cronin makes some half-hearted attempt to explain why Christianity is now defunct, but I ain't buying it - no atheists in foxholes as has been said.3. We have the usual genre trope of the Doomed Legion - a military unit that has an impressive history of past success and survival through decades of conflict which is alluded to in the plot, but yet once the Doomed Legion meets our heroes, it all falls apart, and the soldiers get consistently outfought and outthought by the enemies they have historically beaten readily. I am talking here of the Texas Legion, which fails to win a single battle against the vamps once they meet our heroes... It's hard to see how they would have survived, expanded, and stayed equipped and staffed for 90 years when they get ground up as easily as they do here. Call it the Star Trek Security Syndrome - proximity to protagonists causes ineptitude, confusion, and lack of initiative that is often fatal...4. Cheapest Concluding Sentence in Vol One of a Trilogy Ever. Moreover, the implied massacre will not scare even the most empathic reader much as our heroes have survived even the most improbable combinations of risks and hardships imaginable in Book I, so who's going to worry about a little massacre, especially with the Texas Legion of Cannon Fodder there to handle the dying en masse part. In another Expected Plot Development for Volume II, I am thinking our heroes at Camp Little Bighorn are going to be captured by Evil Vampire Tribe Leader Whomever after the Texas Legion gets pasted...Hm, maybe they'll be rescued by Ents!Anyhoo, I mention these criticisms to let you know this is not clear sailing. Cronin has talent, he writes well, he makes you care about what happens next, and he was paid a truckload of money for this series, so I am being optimistic and presuming that the next two volumes will emphasize the positive points in Vol I and eliminate (or at least minimize) the negative features, mainly wordiness, the occasional well-worn cliché, and, most seriously, the chance for the series to degenerate into pure drudgery as in this Chapter our heroes go to Pittsburgh to kill Evil Vampire Lord Bob Jenkins who was born to a humble blue collar family back in the waning days of the second Reagan Administration, blah, blah, blah.I am giving you one, possibly two bonus stars, under a theory of benefit of the doubt here. Cronin. Don't disappoint me!!! Also, frankly, compared to another movie-optioned big advance vampire plague series that came out recently, Del Toro's wretched "The Strain", this novel reads like Hemmingway...

"What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages"Amy Harper Bellafonte was left in the care of Sister Lacey, until the military got word of her and sent Agents Wolgast and Doyle to retrieve her. Project Noah wants her as a subject for their super-secret new weapon. But things go from bad to worse as the other Twelve test subjects--all former death row inmates--escape the compound.I Liked:First and foremost, I want to congratulate Justin Cronin on his superb writing (finally! An English major who can write!). The beginning, talking about Amy's birth and her mother, seems like a really boring way to begin a post-apocalyptic, vampire novel. But Cronin's superb word usage, simple, yet descriptive and compelling style absolutely sucked me into the story. And then, he continues to build and build and build the suspense and intrigue throughout the next 250 pages in a true thriller fashion, so much that going to bed was a chore!Cronin has an enormous cast to go along with the enormous book. The characters I thought were the best and that I liked the best were Wolgast, Carter, Lacey, Michael and Alicia. Wolgast is, for the first 250 pages, our protagonist. He was relatable, he was real, he may have been a "stereotypical" been-there, done-that FBI agent, but I could believe his story. And his history was truly heart-wrenching. His scenes were the absolute best.I was surprised to find myself actually enjoying Carter. I thought I wouldn't, as he was one of the inmates, but his story is, like Wolgast's, compelling. It was sad that he got accused of something he didn't do, it was sad to see the housewife's failing marriage through his eyes and his wanting to do something for his friend, for the friend that saved him. I can't wait to see how (or if) he comes back.Lacey was such a sweet character. When she made her final stand in the compound, allowing Wolgast and Amy to escape, I wanted to cry. I wanted to yell at Cronin for killing her off.Michael was one of the few "newer" characters that I enjoyed. He was a "Circuit", meaning an engineer, which is what I am too. I liked his analytical thinking and how he was, in some ways, the brains of the operation.And finally, I know that she isn't very well liked, but I did like Alicia. Most of the women tended to fall into the "woman" stereotypes (nurse, mommy, etc--even Maus, a former Watcher, loses all her grit once she is pregnant), but I pictured Alicia as Angelina Jolie. In a nutshell, I think she was a guilty pleasure.Cronin not only gives us amazing characters but an amazing story. I liked his partially based in science story for the creation of the vampires. I loved the detail he put into the future society, the way the newer characters look at machines and "modern" technology and wonder what it was used for. I also wonder how Amy will be used in future novels, what he role is (it is so tantalizing here) and how all the questions posed here will be answered.I Didn't Like:My biggest complaint is one that I've seen in reviews time and time again: Cronin spends 250 pages setting up all these brilliant characters, only to kill them off, and spend the next 250 pages building up the next set of characters--characters that are far less interesting or compelling. Peter was positively dull; I honestly thought he was stupid and wouldn't have minded seeing him dead (though, by now, we realize he is the "hero" in the Hero's Journey Mythological Arc). Sara was kinda interesting, but she was shoveled with a stereotypical chick job (nurse). Maus was only important to get pregnant. Her being a former Watcher makes no impression on the story and she must be protected and saved. Theo is bleh...in fact, most of the characters are "bleh". They are so under-developed (strange, I know, in that so many pages are spent building up characters who end up being under-developed anyway).And then, the second part has so many characters, the book really needed a Dramatis Personae. There is one part, where one of our major characters kills a viral who is "shockingly" revealed as that character's brother. The problem? When the revelation is made, I went "So, who's so-and-so?" I had to go back and remember that he was such-and-such's brother--definitely deadening the big OMG moment. And this is just one time this happens; there are plenty of other characters that get introduced peripherally and then reappear only to make you wonder, "So who's that again and why is he here?"After the crisp, tight writing of the first 250 pages, Cronin then takes his own sweet time (i.e. the rest of the 766 pages) getting to the story. An editor should have chopped out about two hundred pages, and the story wouldn't have been affected in the slightest. Heck, it still might have been bloated!Dialogue/Sexual Situations/Violence:Characters drop a few f-bombs, and milder profanities, but mostly in the latter section, "flyers" stands in for most of the swear words.Theo and Maus get it on a few times (no details). Same with Sara and another character. Amy's mother was a street prostitute.The death toll is enormous--but that should come as a no-brainer from an apocalyptic thriller. Being get bit and impaled regularly, along with broken legs, arms, necks, and any other type of bodily damage you can think of. It could be worse, but you've been warned.Overall:Vampire novels have been in boom lately, and I can imagine some people might look at this hefty book and skip it, thinking it another Twilight knock-off. Let me assure you, this is as far from Twilight as you can get. If you want good writing, good characters, and good vampires that actually bite and kill their prey, you need to check out this book. Even if the book sags in places, I still recommend it and will be checking out part deux when it is released, tentatively in 2012.Brought to you by:*C.S. Light*

I’m not really sure where to start with this book.It’s monstrous. In the best possibly way.Did I like it?Yes, absolutely. I’m half-way through the sequel already.Is it easy to follow?Yes & no.The plot is the yes. Essentially, the military create ‘vampires’ by unearthing a long-lost disease. (I’m not sure if paleovirology is a thing but it sounds cool.) The army think they can control their subjects and the disease. Yeah. You got it. Guess what happens…The no? That’s twofold: the cast of characters & the massive time jump about a third in.I mentioned in a recent review of ‘Salem’s Lot how I was struggling to keep track of a town’s worth of people. (I’ll leave the comparison of Justin Cronin’s style to Stephen King to other people.*) I have the same numbers issue here. Except a lot of the people in The Passage are related and have similar names. There came a point where I had to roll with it and think that maybe character X was Y or possibly Z or actually Q’s sister in disguise as TBWJzjsi7aaQ’s brother. Kind of. And that’s before we add in first names and surnames and nicknames…And the time jump? Did I mention that?The book is essentially a long prequel and main story. The prequel sets the scene – where the virus is from, how it’s released into the wild and so on. The story then skips approx. 100 years into the future to a band of survivors in the ‘Colony’. It was a big break and left a lot of questions about certain initial characters unanswered, people I was ‘invested’ in. There were moments when I felt almost cheated by not knowing what had happened to them. As I struggled with the vast secondary cast, I occasionally felt I was reading purely to see what happened to the original people. Some of my questions are kind of addressed later on, but there’s a long wait for those half-answers.Otherwise…The story is incredibly well-written. There are moments of poetic prose interspersed with sections that are brutally simple. The nastiness within the novel was the latter: it’s clean. There were no lengthy descriptions of monsters dripping in adjectives and doing things adverbily to their overly-described victims. The scare was all the more powerful for that.Partly because of the quality of the writing, there were a few places were the story seemed to jump, almost like a stylus on a record. A motive that I didn’t get. An action that made no sense. A monster’s inability to do something which I thought they could. I’d be hard pressed to tell you what those moments were now, but I remember them jarring.To wrap up…For those interested in apocalyptic thrillers, there are a lot of staples here: the hunt for food/ weapons/ safety & surviving government f**k ups. (We’re due a major one at the moment, surely…) Then there’s the banding together of the people who have fled the relative safety of their home and the resourcefulness they need to survive. It’s well done and there’s enough realism, hard luck and fortune to keep it interesting.For those interested in ‘vampires’ (‘virals’). You’ve got it all. With a twist. References to crosses, mirrors (reflections), hanging upside down, blood and so on.Would I have changed anything? Yes. Filling in the gap between section one & two. Book two addresses some of that time lag (brilliantly) and it’s nice to see some of the pieces slotting into places, but I think I’d still have preferred the story in order. By the time I get to the end of the trilogy, I may have different view.All in all – a great read.*They’re right.

For once, I had to agree with the Stephen King comparisons, at least for the first 300 or so pages, but then WHAM, and suddenly we're 2 years further on, before another jump of around 100 years, to what at first seemed a completely different story. Normally, when I finish a novel I can't start another one straight away; I need time to "come down" and get the previous one out of my system. So I found it unsettling, and hard to carry on reading this one. I even disliked it for a time, but pressed on, assuming that something or someone from the first bit would re-emerge. I'm glad I persevered, but the story had now lost its Stephen King feel, (unless you count his Dark Tower series).Having got all that off my chest, I found the remainder quite entertaining, though I can well understand why some of the other reviewers slated it. Further surprises to come; after I finished it, I then found that it's part one of a trilogy; I'll have to think hard about whether to continue. At least there's the possibility that we'll find out more about Amy, whose enigmatic comment "What I am" in the early part of the story seems to remain unanswered.

This book was such a letdown. I was drawn to the post-apocalypse, virus-based story but the execution is pretty bad.There's some good stuff in the book, the vampire-based virus was interesting and one of the best bits was a setpiece in Las Vegas involving empty streets, darkness, and approching danger, but the good just got swallowed up by the bad.The opening section is over 200 pages...200+ pages of build-up and following a group of characters and their lives, and then we're taken abruptly to 90 years later and a whole new load of characters. I struggled with names, locations, relationships, and the worst thing was that I didn't really care about most of them. The main character, Amy, who is heralded and special and one-to-watch right from the first line, disappears for hundreds of pages, and then shows up as a mute mystery. I found this incredibly frustrating as I was wading through pages and pages of soap-opera drama from the other people just so I could get to the point where Amy re-surfaces.I had some nit-picking issues with language too. The use of "flyers" as some sort of exclamation/expletive was so dumb. It doesn't work as either and made me roll my eyes everytime it was said. The other one was calling children "Littles". I didn't get that one. I know language can evolve quickly but it seemed like such a weird word to change, especially when much of their English was the same as today.Overall, a disappointment.

It took me ages to read this book and I read a lot. I read lots of other books alongside and just tackled a few chapters daily. It was good but did not hold my attention enough to read continuously.It's a bit difficult to get into at the beginning because there are a number of threads to the storyline.1/. Dr Leah's military backed expedition to the South American jungle.2/. Carter a prisoner on death row3/. Wolgast and Doyle FBI agents4/. Amy a 6 year old abandoned at a convent by her desperate mother.All these threads come together and result in the destruction of civilisation as we know it.The next part of the story is about an enclave of people who have survived through the decades after their ancestors escaped on a train to a compound in California. Within the camp is a boy destined to lead a battle against the virals.The writing style reminds me of Stephen King but a little more pondering. There's good characterisation and the story is imaginative. I will definitely read book 2

Unlike alot of reviewers I had no problem with the time hop or the second set of characters. I think just coming after the very strong first set the reader was always going to be slightly disappointed. I especially wished I could have heard more from some characters before they met their demise like Carter.I found it commendable that the author eschewed the popular post apocalyptic trend of following a single male lead and having his female characters just be a long line of the dead/raped/damsel in distress /unlikely totty. Amy, Alicia, the Nun, Sara, the old lady were all distinct and strong characters.The novel was very well written which is also unusual, the majority of apocalyptic epics these days are usually cardboard cut outs littered with clichés and poor editing. Not so this book which was a delight to read.The virals I felt a bit blah about. I know apocalypses are generally unexplained but how can a virus change a physiognomy so much? How come the bunker crew caught the virus from the air but the 100yr survivors only from direct bites?Overall I enjoyed this but not sure I have it in me to read part two yet and certainly not at full price.