The Passage - Justin Cronin

Date Started: 8/29/11
Date Finished: 9/4/11

One-Word Summary: Terrifying

I had this book sitting in my Amazon wish list for a while so I was excited when my mom sent it to me after she had finished it. I started it immediately and all I can say is wow. This was an amazing book. Terrifying, yes, but amazing.

The reason this book was so scary to me is how real the author makes everything. It doesn't stretch the imagination to see humanity fall as it does in his rendering. In fact it seems like we get closer and closer to an event like this happening every day. How practical it all seems - why not test out new drugs/viruses on death row inmates? And from there it's only a short slide to the end of the world.

One element I found interesting was the time jump in the narration - from the outbreak of the virals to several generations  into the future, when humanity lives under the lights, never seeing the stars for fear of the hunting that will come at night. I would have liked to have heard more about the intervening years but we're left to piece it all together as our narrators travel across the desolate landscape and recall their pasts and those of their families. The mystery of what happened to Europe is never solved, so we're left to hope that it is addressed in the coming sequel (I have no doubt it will be).

So in this horrifying future we deal with the viral Babcock and those virals and humans that he controls. I thought it tied together nicely in the end - and what a surprise with Sister Lacey living thanks to Dr. Lear (whose science was behind the outbreak to begin with). Her faith is amazing and the fact that it is she, in the end, who kills Babcock, was completely surprising. I read in the notes to the book that the issue of her faith is supposed to be something of a question for the reader. Is she really hearing from God, or is she crazy? In my mind, perhaps because of my own leanings, there was never a question that she was communicating with God. So with that base, her death is satisfying because we know where she is going and she is happy to get there and see Dr. Lear again.

Seeing Amy grow the way she does throughout the book is also a good story-arc. One question I had is the rate of her aging. Clearly she isn't the same age - physically - as she is at the start of the book. So she is aging, albeit at a much slower rate. And her role as savior of sorts of the virals - who constantly question "who am I?" when around her is compelling. She clearly has some kind of control/resistance to them but to what extent? And finally, her relationship with Wolgast...wow. I have to say, I didn't see it coming. That he would survive as a viral, and follow her because she is his home (and they always go home) was out of left field and such an interesting twist. I can't wait to see how it is addressed in the next book.

Make no mistake - this is a book that will haunt you. I thought about it for days afterwards. But it ends with hope. There is a community of thousands in Texas - thriving, in addition to surviving, and no doubt in the next book we will see what is there. In the meantime we're left to wonder about the fates of Sara and Hollis and the rest. It didn't look good based on Sara's diary, but here's to hoping...