A review by sevenlefts
The Passage by Justin Cronin

5.0

These definitely ain't no sparkly vampires.

I ran across this review in the New York Times and thought I'd give it a try. So, so glad I did. This book had me sucked in (ahem) from the beginning. As many horror novels do, this one starts with secret government/military experiments gone horribly wrong. A virus is set loose across North America, turning many of us into light-fearing, blood-sucking maniacs. But a few manage to survive, including one very special little girl.

The action jumps from the collapse of society forward a century to a time when only a few pockets of humanity have managed to survive in enclosed camps. Cronin paints a believable world with a culture that has developed to survive almost nightly onslaughts by these horrific creatures. In one such encampment, the batteries that have run the lights that keep the creatures at bay are starting to fail. A stranger arrives, a message is received, and a group strikes out to find help.

I like how Cronin jumps around with the timeline a bit during the early parts of the book, jumping forward and back yet not giving anything away until necessary. This books reads very cinematically -- it's a kind of a given that this will be turned into a movie. I just hope it's good. And that the next two books in the planned trilogy measure up. I'm looking forward to them.