Thursday, July 22, 2010

The Passage by Justin Cronin


The latest vampire novel. A HUGE book. I kind of wished I had a Nook to read it on as big as it is. Once again the vampires are created by a virus, and in this case a military researched and modified virus. The program is being tested on criminals with no family who are on death row. They are told they are being given a chance to not be put to death if only they help out this project. We also get an idea where the virus comes from through email/letters at the beginning of the book. A young girl who gets dropped off at a convent, Amy, gets picked up to be part of this program. The agent who picks her up, has a past that makes him not sure about bringing this girl into the project. Things go wrong, of course, and the "vampires" escape into the world. Changing everything. At that point we go into a future world where people live in colonies, and as far as we know, this one colony is all that is probably left in the world.


In the end, Amy shows up and leads these people to where there are other survivors/colonies/armies fighting the vampires. I find it interesting where the story goes with how these vampires actually behave, and what happens with Amy. Not sure if it is really left open for a sequel. I suppose it is, but in the end, it'd be nice to just have one story.


It started slow, kind of slow in the middle, and then once the action picks up, the story does too. So I would recommend this if you are into a long read. It gets good if you just hang in there.