The Passage

A Novel (Book One of The Passage Trilogy)

By: Justin Cronin

Narrated by: Scott Brick, Adenrele Ojo, Abby Craden

Length: 36 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times best seller.

This thrilling novel kicks off what Stephen King calls “a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction".

Now a FOX TV series!

Named one of Paste’s best horror books of the decade.

Named one of the 10 best novels of the year by TIME and one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Esquire, U.S. News & World Report, NPR/On Point, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, BookPage, and Library Journal.

“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. Look for the entire Passage trilogy:

• The Passage
• The Twelve
• The City of Mirrors

©2010 Justin Cronin (P)2010 Random House

Critic reviews

“[A] blockbuster.” (The New York Times)

“Mythic storytelling.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

“Magnificent...Cronin has taken his literary gifts, and he has weaponized them...The Passage can stand proudly next to Stephen King’s apocalyptic masterpiece The Stand, but a closer match would be Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: A story about human beings trying to generate new hope in a world from which all hope has long since been burnt.” (Time)

Sigh

After 36+ hours of invested listening time, I ended up throwing my headphones at the end. The ending was abrupt with an overwhelming unsatisfactory completion. I had to check my Ipod to see if it skipped chapter only to find out the book was actually over. I will never invest in the sequel. His attempt at capturing an audience for his next book backfired with me. He definitely lost me with that rude ending.

I loved this book!

I loved the story, the characters, the whole thing and I loved that the writer was not in a hurry to get to the end. This is the first book in a long time that held my attention, made me laugh, sad and at times wanna cry with the story! I also liked the narrator. I am hard on narrators but I really did like this one.

I loved this book. binged on this for two day!

a lot of times I'll get an audio book,listen to it in the background while working and never hear a word. I haven't completed a bit of work in the last two days. I highly recommend this book.

Passably epic imitation of Stephen King

This is not a perfect book, but it is perfect for what it's been marketed as: a great big entertaining blockbuster of a summer read. In many ways, it almost feels like a rip-off/homage to Stephen King's The Stand, and if you liked that novel, it's almost certain you will like this one. The book is divided into two parts: everything leading up to the vampire apocalypse, and then the post-apocalypse world, a hundred years later. There is a large cast of characters, a tangle of subplots, and a really annoying cliffhanger at the very end which makes it clear that there's going to be a sequel. Cronin's writing is good, though I found him to be sloppy on a number of details, and not as visceral as King (nor is Cronin as ruthless and bloodthirsty as King). But if you want a big doorstopper novel to settle down with and enjoy without expecting it to rock your world or change the way you look at literature, this will fit the bill.

it was pretty great for the first hundred pages

...And then it turned into a tired, old, generic, survival vampire story. Nothing really new here.

Starts slow

Gave it an hour. It couldn't catch my interest. Spent too much much time introducing Amy via the travails of a single mother.

Enthralling on the surface. Flat on the details

First off, you have to read a lot to get into the meat. If you're impatient forget about it. He takes a while to get to the point. It's like listening to my wife tell a story. I found myself thinking "Just get to the point!" a lot. And not in a formal suspense way. It was words without words.

The story had the same tone all of the way through. Never any levity or range in character emotion. No jokes. No one would be able to go through these situations while being so serious.

But other than that, still found myself interested in finding out what happens next.

Oh and this is a vampire book. No one told me that.

Great Listen

I don't normally read books like this but I could not put it down. I absolutely loved it. All readers were excellent!!!

Interesting!

Without revealing too much it's an interesting take on the apocalypse scenario, and I enjoyed it very much!

Believable, varied characters who have life breathed into them by an outstanding voice actor.

Looking forward to the 2nd book in the series.

Meh...

I'll echo the comments of many, that the first third was really engaging and interesting and when Cronin suddenly lept forward 100 years it completely reset the tone, pacing and my interest in the story. It was jarring, and the style and tone of the second 2/3 does not compare favorably to the first. But, ultimately it did become engaging on it's own merits.
 
However, as a whole, the book was merely OK. There are a number of threads Cronin starts weaving, that seem to have a lot of potential and drew my interest, only to have him take odd and uninteresting turns. Their are others that he drops and brings back much later, after I'd completely lost interest in the idea, and others that I can only hope will be brought back in the second or third installment of this epic story. And, of course, there are the threads that he seemingly brings to an end, only to resurrect them later, unexpectedly, and in some cases he does this far too often. For example, at times I felt I was reading a treatment for a soap opera with the dead characters that kept returning to the story... Being a vampire story, some is expected, but he uses the mechanic in other ways far too often for my taste.

And now that I've mentioned this is a vampire story, I do feel the need to address the important point that this isn't a Rice or Meyer's vampire story. It's more a Matheson ("I Am Legend") vampire story.

Technically, the writing could be tightened up, some unnecessarily drawn out sections and parts where the editor should have not allowed Cronin to indulge himself in ways I'm sure he found much more enjoyable than I'm sure most readers did. I really enjoyed Scott Brick and the other narrators work on this book.

Overall I gave it 3 stars. It's not terrible, it's not great. I'm intrigued enough that I'll get the next book of the trilogy to see where the story goes.