Review: The Passage by Justin Cronin
Blurb:
“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born.”
An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival,The Passage is the story of Amy—abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape—but he can’t stop society’s collapse. And as Amy walks alone, across miles and decades, into a future dark with violence and despair, she is filled with the mysterious and terrifying knowledge that only she has the power to save the ruined world.
Review:
The passage was highly recommended to me and I’ve been putting it off for a long while. I don’t typically like vampire books these days, but this was an exception. I think this falls more into post-apocalyptic or apocalyptic than in the vampire genre.
All around I’d say this book did a lot of unique and innovative things with pov and plot, which is why I’m giving it five stars even if I may not continue with the series.
The thought put into the collapse of the world and the consequences of that were phenomenal. So much detail and nuance beyond “everyone just killed each other,” or “crazy disease turned everyone into vampires.” The political and social aspects were clearly thought out well.
That said this was largely a character-driven novel and the plot was pieced together. It was almost like three books in one: pre-apocalypse, apocalypse, post-apocalypse. The SFF elements didn’t even come into play for the first third of the book for the most part. The povs you follow in one section don’t follow into the next.
There are deeply disturbing and dark characters in the book, some of whom you get pov chapters from. A lot of morally gray characters as well. But in typical post-apoc fashion, these aren’t the over-the-top sorts from fantasy novels, they’re convicts. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book and thought it was done well.
In addition to this being a sort of apocalyptic-going-on-post-apocalyptic genre, I also think it’s more of a science fantasy novel than science fiction or fantasy. The fantasy elements like telepathy and vampirism are pathogenic. There are other subtle elements of fantasy, maybe, but it’s hard to tell how or if they tie into the larger system. I expect those are things that will get explained in later books.
Overall I really just found myself immersed in the complex and changing world with its uniquely strange characters. There was mystery but there was also a sense of purpose. There was chaos but there was also reason and direction behind it. The characters were complex but realistic, and the fantasy elements were immersively believable.
Until the end. And here’s why I might not continue with the series.
To keep this spoiler free, I’m going to generalize. A character makes a decision that puts all of humanity at risk and the motivations are not explained. Not only are the motivations not explained, this decision is contrary to a decision they made just pages before the event. The decision is reversible in a way, so there is no logical reason for this decision to be made. After the rest of the book was executed so well, I cannot wrap my head around the complete failure of an ending. I also can’t justify taking off a star for a book that in my opinion was otherwise a delight to read.
