The Passage by Jusin Cronin

Similar in scope to Stephen King's epic The Stand, creepy as Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, and compelling as Cormac McCarthy's The Road, at 766 pages and weighing almost three pounds, The Passage will not only keep you reading for awhile, it'll keep you awake at night and build your arm muscles, too. If you've been considering buying one of those electronic reader devices, now might be a good time to invest in one.

When 15-year-old aspiring novelist Christopher Paolini self-published his first book, Eragon, a few years back, he received positive comments for being so inclusive of traditional elements of dragon mythology, but he was likewise blasted for the same reasons. Words like "unoriginal" and "copy cat plot" were tossed about. The same comparisons are being lobbed at Justin Cronin over The Passage. Yes, he does include familiar plot lines about government experiments gone horribly wrong, freakish genetically altered monsters a la Dean Koontz's Watchers terrorizing the planet, and a band of human survivors trying to connect with others of their kind, but it is the literate and inventive way he strings these threads together that make his latest work so readable.

The Passage unfolds in waves, like the waters of a still pond when a pebble is dropped in. Scientists discover a new strain of creature in a South American rainforest and bring it to the U.S. to perform experiments on it. They want to genetically engineer an unstoppable soldier who can see in the dark, heal himself rapidly, and keep going and going and going much like the Energizer bunny if he were chasing terrorists. The first 12 human subjects are death row inmates, mostly convicted murderers who already have a disregard for basic human life. When injected with the experimental serum, they become glowing, flesh-eating monsters, more like bats or giant insects than 'vampires', but due to their thirst for blood and their mouth full of straw-shaped teeth, the inevitable labels stick: virals, flyers, dracs, vamps, smokes, etc. Of course they escape from their military stronghold and wreak havoc on the countryside, literally wiping out the majority of the population on the continent. Pockets of survivors somehow manage to stay alive and carry on for about 100 years. And that is the gist of what this book is about: surviving.

It is also about "the story." Characters seem to cherish tales and legends about the "Time Before" because events unfolded so quickly, there was no time to write them down to pass along for future generations. Cronin includes scenes involving a public library and another where a character discovers boxes filled with novels. Still another characters uses books and manuals to teach himself how to solve technical problems with the aging equipment. Some of the breaks in Cronin's narrative are to inject bits of a personal diary found years after the fact. These glimpses help to propel the story along and leave the reader with hope that future generations survive. If nothing else, their words do anyway.

The first third of this book had me completely enthralled. I couldn't wait to turn the page and find out what was going to happen next as the groundwork was put into place about the secret government installation, the Federal agents in charge, the enigmatic little girl (Amy), Sister Lacey from the convent, and all the rest. It was compelling and literate. The middle third, and in my opinion, the weakest section, introduces a substantial cast of characters from "First Colony", a walled community in California which has somehow managed to stay alive for several decades. Many sometimes tedious pages are filled with explanations and backstory on who they are and what they do. There are the usual clichéd characters: the geeky tinkerer, the prophetic old black woman, the competitive brothers, the nurturing female nurse, the braggart, the soldier, and so on. One minute they seem to be important characters, integral to the plot, and the next they are killed off, victims of a viral attack...or each other. The final third of the novel gets back on track as we see select members of the Colony leaving on a quest to find other humans who have survived. They share a drive to discover the truth and somehow fulfill a mission, all the while rediscovering their humanity along the way. This last part was as captivating to me as the first, because neither I nor the characters knew what was waiting over the next hill or around the next corner.

I have to confess I fell for the hype that said this book was the "must read" of the summer. I don't normally like post-apocalyptic stories because they're so darn depressing, but this one was getting lots of gushing reviews back in the spring, so of course I had to see for myself. And I am glad I did. Now, if only somebody had mentioned this was going to be the first book in a planned trilogy.... I hope I can hold out until the next book in the series is released. Please write faster, Mister Cronin!
______

Note: The Passage was written for a mature audience and is fairly intense in places. Due to language and violence, I recommend this title for 11th grade and older. For these reasons, it is not available at Stone MS Library.