The Passage by Justin Cronin

The Passage by Justin Cronin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I'm putting my Tolstoy mini-marathon on hold for this week to review a book I was reading at the same time as Resurrection.


The Passage draws a wonderful picture of some fascinating characters and it does so within a story that keeps drawing the readers in. I love books that do not sacrifice plot to character and visa versa. This is one of them.



Here's a paragraph where two characters are saying goodbyes because the circumstances are forcing them to separate:



He did; he understood. All that they were to each other seemed cradled within this simple fact. He felt no surprise or even regret but, rather, a deep and sudden gratitude and, with it, a force of clarity, filling him like a breath of winter air. He wondered what this feeling was and then he knew. He was giving her up.



In a vampire story that is filled with action scenes, it is important to remember the importance of emotions we all know. Justin Cronin has done this well.



The Passage is the first book in a series and, for that reason, the ending disappointed me. There are many questions that are still unanswered. Perhaps I'll get those in the next volume, but I don't know.



Warning – There are a couple of SPOILERS in the next paragraph -



The characters of Amy and Peter, especially Amy, have aspects to them that go beyond the premise of the book. The plot is about a weapons experiment conducted by the U.S. Military that goes very wrong, destroying the majority of North America and possibly the world. Amy was changed do to that experiment, but there was something special about Amy prior to the change. This was evident in the reactions of animals to her during a visit to a zoo when she was a child. Why she was different before the experiment was never made clear. There were also hints that there is something special about Peter as well, but we never learn what that is. We know his extraordinary human qualities, but not his supernatural ones.



Overall, I enjoyed The Passage and intend to read the next book in the series.





View all my reviews