I just finished reading this book on my Kindle. It was recommended to me by my cousin Danny and I am so grateful. I downloaded the book without knowing what it was about and just trusting Danny's judgement. It turned out to be just the kind of book I love to read. If you look on the internet to see what genre of literature it is, The Passage is listed as follows: Dystopia, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Epic Science Fiction and Fantasy, Science Fiction, Utopian and dystopian fiction, Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, Vampire fiction, New York Times Best Seller list. In some ways you could compare this book to The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton or The Stand (one of my all time favorites) by Stephen King.
The Passage tells the story of the origin and outbreak of a deadly government engineered virus that changes the world forever. The book follows a colony of survivors 100 years A.V. (After Virus) in their determination and struggle to survive. The author explores how little society values the lives of homeless, disenfranchised people and the morality of drug testing on these "throw away" human test subjects. There is also an interesting spiritual aspect to the story.
The characters that Justin Cronin created in this book are complex and the relationships between them had me hooked from the beginning. When I pick up a new book, it has to grab me in the first couple pages otherwise I lose interest. That was not a problem here. The only problem I see is that The Passage is listed as the first book of a trilogy...the second book, The Twelve, is scheduled to be released next week on October 16th. You can bet that I will be downloading it ASAP. The problem? There were 2 years between the publishing of the first two books...does this mean that I will have to wait until 2014 to see how it all turns out? I guess it will give me something to look forward to, huh?
I wonder how long it will take for this book to be made into a movie...
