I just finished reading The Passage, by Justin Cronin, and I have to say that all the good things I’ve been reading in the reviews are quite true. I’ve heard this book described as a cross between The Stand and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the reviewer wasn’t wrong. They just forgot to add the zombie element. For most of the book, the protagonists have hordes of monsters on their trail.
But first things first. The novel begins with a series of introductions to a wide cast of seemingly unrelated characters. Any one who’s read mystery novels know that when a writer does this, the plots will converge, sooner or later. In not so short order, Cronin introduces us to a doctor searching the jungle for something, a very young girl with a hard luck life, an intellectually retarded death row inmate, and a world weary FBI agent on loan to the Army for a highly classified medial project. As Cronin starts to weave these characters’ stories together, he starts to ratchet up the creepiness factor. It’s been a long time since I read an author who could do dread like Cronin can do. Plus, Cronin has the knack for revealing just enough of what’s going on for me, the reader, to piece together the story without being spoon fed plot points. The story grows, organically. I know a little more than the characters and the mystery of what I don’t know drew me on. A good thing, since the book is well over 700 pages.
A couple of hundred pages in, believe it or not, the main part of the book starts. We leave Amy, the hard luck girl who fell into the hands of the army, somewhere in Oregon with the whole world falling apart around her. With the virus the Army and the doctor cooked up turning people into bloodthirsty vampire-zombies on the loose, we jump forward about 92 years into the future to meet the people of the Colony, located in the San Jacinto Mountains of California. The people are the children and grandchildren of minors sent west in the last days of the United States. After barely two generations, their society looks a lot different than ours even though they’re still waiting for the Army to come and relieve them.
Unfortunately, this is where the book bogs down a bit. After some interesting chapters learning about life in the Colony and meeting our next batch of protagonists, the action starts to slow down as the descendants go about their business. It takes a while for Cronin to ratchet up the tension again by having several key members of the colony start to go mad and make disastrous decisions for the Colony. Seeing no other option, Peter (our new hero) and Amy and a motley group of teenagers decide to follow an old Army transmission summoning Amy to Telluride, Colorado. The journey takes up the last half of the book and–gloriously–the action never slows down. It’s a bloody amazing read.
Like The Stand, there are supernatural elements to this story. And like The Stand, they felt superfluous to requirements here, too. The Passage has all the hallmarks of a great science gone wrong story: a doctor who doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions, an Army that wants to create super soldiers without thinking about the consequences, and a virus that can create some damned scary monsters. Why would you need more than that? But Cronin introduces some telepathy and some hive-mind dreaming and some serious hinting at destinies that feel like there’s also something supernatural afoot. I understand the point of the hive-mind stuff, but the rest of it just feels unnecessary when the rest of the book (apart from the slow bit) was so good.
Cronin is ruthless with his characters. He pushes them and scares them all the way until the end. The second half of the book more than makes up for the slowness in the middle and the weird supernatural stuff. I hit page 475 or so and could barely stop reading until I finished it this evening. The ending makes it clear that there will be more books in the series and I am eagerly looking forward to them. I badly want to know what happens with Peter and the rest of the gang.