Sunday, January 7, 2018

The Passage - Review


Title:  The Passage
Author:  Justin Cronin
Series:  The Passage #1

Synopsis:  “It happened fast.  Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.
     “First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment.  Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered.  All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear – of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.
     As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary.  FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he’s done in the line of duty.  Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse.  He is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors.  But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey – spanning miles and decades – towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun.”

Review:  I loved this novel.  It’s truly epic, spanning a large period of time and multiple characters.  If you’ve read my other reviews then you know that I love zombie novels and apocalypse novels.  I found this to be a unique take on the traditional zombie apocalypse.  The use of vampires instead of zombies is not all that original.  What I found unique is that the majority of the vampires are just mindless feeding creatures, semi controlled by twelve elder vampires; and then there’s Amy.  She is a different sort of creature.  She is not human anymore, but she isn’t like the vampires either. 
     I especially enjoyed the sections of the novel dealing with the human compound struggling to survive 90+ years after the start of the apocalypse.  They have struggled for more than 90 years to keep the lights on and the vampires at bay.  They have created their own government, and their own laws to keep their civilization alive.  The Passage is a vast and complicated novel that sucked me in and wouldn’t let me go.  I was only halfway through when I went to the store and purchased the next two in the series.  Cronin has created a masterpiece.  The world building and the character development are spot on.  Once you start reading The Passage you won’t want to stop.

Publisher: Ballantine Books

If you like this book you may want to read:



Dies the Fire (Emberverse #1) by S.M. Stirling



Feed (Newsflesh #1) by Mira Grant  (read BookGirlR’s review here)




The Twelve (The Passage #1) by Justin Cronin