The Passage (The Passage #1) by Justin Cronin #bookreview #horror #fantasy #apocalyptic #vampires

Title: The Passage

Author: Justin Cronin

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Publication Date: June 8, 2010

Page Count: 897

My rating: 2 stars

About the book:

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.

The Passage by Justin Cronin is the first book of the apocalyptic horror series by the same name. I have been seeing recently that this series was going to be made into a new television show coming up in the new year so I figured I needed to give the book a try. Apparently this first book was one of the must read titles of 2010 so I’m only a decade late but with all the four and five star reviews I was certainly curious.

Well… as anyone who knows me the first hint at where my rating tanked comes pretty easily in simply the page count for this one. I was worried when picking it up seeing the first book at almost nine hundred pages but I was determined to ignore that number and give this one a go. Unfortunately, unlike a select few lengthy titles out there this one turned out exactly as I always fear in being a slow moving pace that struggles to keep my attention.

The book blurb for the passage gives readers a glimpse into the story telling about the agent Brad Wolgast who had been recruiting inmates for release to the program that eventually gets the order to track down a little girl named Amy who has a special power. Perhaps if the book strictly focused on those few characters I would have been more invested but instead it’s one that wanders around aimlessly like a zombie on the Walking Dead bringing in more characters and situations but with nothing really exciting to make me care about any of it. Sure a vampire attack happened here or there but I could have had several really long naps and not missed much of anything in there really. So as one can see this title really wasn’t for me on paper even though I’m a fan of apocalyptic tales but maybe the show will pick up the action that was missing in the middle of this one.

Find this book online: 

Goodreads  /   Amazon

About the author:

Justin Cronin is the New York Times bestselling author of The Passage, The Twelve, The City of Mirrors, Mary and O’Neil (which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize), and The Summer Guest. Other honors for his writing include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Whiting Writers’ Award. A Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Rice University, he divides his time between Houston, Texas, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.