“The Passage” by Justin Cronin is a fun ride, a very fun ride. This isn’t highbrow “literature,” folks, but this is a well-written novel, fairly taut for 750 pages with very good character development.
As I’ve said on this blog many times before, I’m a huge Stephen King fan. Not Annie Wilkes huge, but huge. I haven’t read EVERYTHING King has written, and usually I read everything new and one “golden oldie” I haven’t read each year. Without question, far and away, my favorite Stephen King novel is “The Stand.”
“The Passage” is a post-apocalyptic novel in the tradition of “The Stand” and of “Swan Song” by Robert McCammon, another excellent novel. “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy is a little different. “The Stand,” “Swan Song” and “The Passage” are all post-apocalyptic good vs. evil novels, while “The Road” is more of a tome of survival in a post-apocalyptic world. “The Road,” is, of course, more highbrow than any of the other three novels, but I recommend all four of them very highly. I do not, however, recommend that anyone read them in seriatim because there are similarities particularly among “The Stand,” “Swan Song” and “The Passage” which will make it difficult for any reader to evaluate any of them on a standalone basis.
Without giving anything away, “The Passage” deals with a black ops government experiment gone bad and then fast-forwards about a century in the future. (“The Stand” uses a modern plague as a jumping-off point while “Swan Song” details the aftermath of a nuclear war). The government was attempting to produce super strong soldiers who could quickly recover from injuries, but the initial batches of the “virus” didn’t achieve all of the desired results for a variety of reasons. After a significant security breach, the test subjects escape and spread the virus to trigger the apocalyptic event. Not all are infected, and the rest of the novel centers on a group of descendants of initial survivors who have led their entire lives in a segregated community. Think of a generation of a small group of people who have lived their entire lives cut off from the rest of the world who understand some of the dangers of their world but know nothing—in fact, have no frame of reference to understand—the world beyond their community.
Some readers have been frustrated because they invested in certain characters only to see those characters drop off the radar following the fast-forward. Clearly, you will have to reinvest in a new group of characters, but in retrospect, the investment pays off. Especially since “The Passage” is intended to be the first book in a trilogy.
“The Passage” is an ideal fun summer read. Fans of Stephen King will find Cronin’s writing style familiar. “The Passage” is like “comfort food” for the reading palate.
Live long, read and prosper. We’ll leave the lights on for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment