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A review by katiescho741
The Passage by Justin Cronin
2.0
This book was such a letdown. I was drawn to the post-apocalypse, virus-based story but the execution is pretty bad.
There's some good stuff in the book, the vampire-based virus was interesting and one of the best bits was a setpiece in Las Vegas involving empty streets, darkness, and approching danger, but the good just got swallowed up by the bad.
The opening section is over 200 pages...200+ pages of build-up and following a group of characters and their lives, and then we're taken abruptly to 90 years later and a whole new load of characters. I struggled with names, locations, relationships, and the worst thing was that I didn't really care about most of them. The main character, Amy, who is heralded and special and one-to-watch right from the first line, disappears for hundreds of pages, and then shows up as a mute mystery. I found this incredibly frustrating as I was wading through pages and pages of soap-opera drama from the other people just so I could get to the point where Amy re-surfaces.
I had some nit-picking issues with language too. The use of "flyers" as some sort of exclamation/expletive was so dumb. It doesn't work as either and made me roll my eyes everytime it was said. The other one was calling children "Littles". I didn't get that one. I know language can evolve quickly but it seemed like such a weird word to change, especially when much of their English was the same as today.
Overall, a disappointment.
There's some good stuff in the book, the vampire-based virus was interesting and one of the best bits was a setpiece in Las Vegas involving empty streets, darkness, and approching danger, but the good just got swallowed up by the bad.
The opening section is over 200 pages...200+ pages of build-up and following a group of characters and their lives, and then we're taken abruptly to 90 years later and a whole new load of characters. I struggled with names, locations, relationships, and the worst thing was that I didn't really care about most of them. The main character, Amy, who is heralded and special and one-to-watch right from the first line, disappears for hundreds of pages, and then shows up as a mute mystery. I found this incredibly frustrating as I was wading through pages and pages of soap-opera drama from the other people just so I could get to the point where Amy re-surfaces.
I had some nit-picking issues with language too. The use of "flyers" as some sort of exclamation/expletive was so dumb. It doesn't work as either and made me roll my eyes everytime it was said. The other one was calling children "Littles". I didn't get that one. I know language can evolve quickly but it seemed like such a weird word to change, especially when much of their English was the same as today.
Overall, a disappointment.