Book #79: The Passage

Title: The Passage
Author: Justin Cronin

I used my Audible.com credits to buy Justin Cronin's The Passage because I am a cheapskate. I didn't want to wait through 300 holds in the library system to get my hands on the novel, and I didn't want to pay $25 for the book either, but using my Audible Gold credits, I got all 36 hours of The Passage for about $8. I was reveling in my good deal, but I hadn't bargained that I'd be getting such a good book in the process as well. I'd read reviews of The Passage that said "If you love Stephen King or vampire thrillers, you'll love The Passage." Well, I don't love Stephen King of vampire thrillers, but I did love The Passage.

I'd say that anyone who loves a well-crafted story where all of the characters and storylines introduced over almost 800 pages and more than 100 years come together in a satisfying way at the end will love The Passage. I kept thinking to myself, "Well, that's the end of that story," but he always managed to surpass my expectations and weave it back in somehow. Ordinarily, I use the books on my iPod to keep me company as I run and do laundry after I've exhausted my weekly supply of NPR podcasts, but I'm now almost three weeks behind on podcasts, because I listened to The Passage every chance I got.

The story is complicated, but here's a brief synopsis: the government decides to take on a project infecting death-row inmates with a virus that turns them into vampires, in the hopes that they can unleash the vampires and wreak havoc in the Middle East. They also infect a small girl, Amy, with a variant strand of the virus. The vampires manage to escape and wipe out most of the human population in the United States. A hundred years passes, and small pockets of humans live in continual fear of the vampires. When Amy appears at one of the colonies in California, a group of humans embarks on a quest to take her back to the Colorado testing center where she was changed. Along the way, Amy and the group of people she travels with find meaning and purpose in a world where most people seem to have lost a reason for living.

Were certain aspects of the book improbable? Of course. Millions of people died in the course of the book, but the people traveling with Amy managed to escape the most dire situations imaginable. Of course Cronin and Sister Lacey and Auntie would say that fate played an important part in their staying alive. If you're squeamish about blood and gore, this might not be the book for you, and if you're sensitive about hearing swearing in an audio recording, stick to the paper format of the book. But read it-- you'll be glad you did.