The Passage
Written by: Justin Cronin
Publisher: Ballantine Books (2010)
Reviewed by: DeeAnna Boie
This is a whopper of a book size-wise. Coming in at 766 pages, if you get the print version like I did, you could use it to weigh down a body you were trying to ditch in a river. Thankfully The Passage is pretty decent reading considering it’s length.
In the first novel of a planned series, Justin Cronin takes several popular horror and sci-fi elements, picks them apart, then sews them back together with a lot of literary and psychological human condition themes to create one hell of a Frankensteinish novel. Not just viral pandemic, not just vampires, but vampire pandemic! You want death row inmates in a top secret government sponsored scientific viral research gone awry in an apocalyptic contagion scenario? Well, even if you didn’t, it’s got that too. How about 400+ pages of sociological and somewhat anthropological examination of the formations of a new society from the remnants of the past, through the experience of those whose grandparents were only children when “it” started? Yes? No? Maybe? Well, you’ll getting a hefty dose of that too.
There are at least two main stories happening in this book. The beginning gives us a somewhat detailed account of the pre-apocalypse plot and characters up through and slightly past the spread of the infection itself, while the second portion of the book gives us the plot and characters post apocalypse. One hundered years after the infection in fact.
What I liked about the book besides the themes (I love pretty much anything that has to do with the end of the world, vampires, pandemics or zombies) was the human perspective. And not humans in the physiological sense, but the mental and emotional sense. I liked that much of the story centered around how the survivors in their remote colony, not even knowing if there was a world left other than themselves, interacted with each other and their environment where the virals still assaulted them, while creating a new society with relatively little information from the past to go on. They made their own rules, their own government, and their own social standings.
What I didn’t like about it, was that it was unbelievably long. There were a lot of details, especially about bit part characters, that really could have been left out. In fact, unless the first character we’re introduced to in the first chapter comes back somehow in the remainder of the series, I’m not sure I see a need to have had to read about her. She does give birth to a very important character that is a centerpiece of the rest of the book, and very likely the entire series, but I don’t know that I needed to read that many pages, in such detail of her story as opposed to her daughter’s. Amy is the child, and was infected purposefully with a very specific strain of the virus. Though it’s important to know how she ended up at the lab, I don’t think it was important that I know all the details of her mother and father’s relationship before Amy was even conceived.
Throughout the book, this happens quite a bit with various bit players, while we’re sort of left to guess details of other characters that are important. Like, who the f**k is Fanning??? Because he sounds pretty damned key to the twelve plus Amy, and why do the twelve plus the lab workers call him Zero?? Or is it the twelve plus Zero and Amy is the other? There are really 14, yet only 13 are ever referred to together, and then always as 12 plus something else. I’m thoroughly perplexed. I can only hope this is explained in subsequent books.
Lastly, I wish I would have known before I finished reading it, that this was the first in a planned series, because it’s stuff like the above that made me want to hurl the book through a window at the end. Which is of course, a cliffhanger.
All in all, it’s still a really good novel, and I was really impressed with a new perspective on old genre themes. I didn’t think it could be done but Cronin did it well. And even though it’s frustrating, some of the questions I was left with are fascinating, gripping questions, that pretty much ensure I’ll be buying the next book. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything on tentative release date for it – but I did stumble across this if anyone’s interested: http://enterthepassage.com/
DeeTunes 
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