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caresays 's review for:
The Passage
by Justin Cronin
Okay, guys, I just spent thirty-five hours of my life - thirty-five hours I will never ever ever get back - listening to this audiobook.
WHY WHY WHY DID I DO THAT??
A month or so ago, I was trolling around Audible, looking for a great value for my one-credit-a-month plan. The front page was advertising The Passage with great enthusiasm, and I like apocalypses as much as the next girl, so I bought it.
It started off well enough. The government is experimenting with a virus strain from vampire bats in Bolivia. They've reached the stage where they need human subjects and send a FBI agent named Wolgast to collect twelve death-row inmates. Each of the twelve are injected with the virus and morph into these creepy, human-esque creatures with glowing orange eyes and a taste for blood. They also possess incredible strength and are super difficult to kill. The army wants to use them as super weapons in the Middle East. GREAT IDEA, RIGHT, ARMY??
Basically, the Twelve break out because it turns out that they can sneak into weak-willed people's dreams, and start infecting people by the hundreds. This infection soon spreads across the entire continental US, decimating the population, and turning millions of individuals into virals as well. However, the reader is let in on a little secret - a six-year-old girl named Amy is the 13th subject to be infected, but she doesn't become a viral. She just develops a great complexion and long life and can sometimes read minds and shit.
THEN 100 YEARS PASS. WE HAVE TO ENDURE AN EPICALLY LONG JOURNAL ENTRY FROM AN OLD WOMAN RECALLING HOW HER PARENTS SAVED HER FROM THE VIRALS.
...And we're introduced to the First Colony in California, populated by characters that all blend in together and that you could hardly care about.
I think the protagonist was supposed to be Peter Jaxon, a young man who has, in a true cliched fashion, always lived in the shadows of his father and older brother. Peter is special because he's always felt that he's meant for ~*greater things*~. After what felt like years of Cronin discussing the First Colony and Peter's home life and the backgrounds of more or less every individual in the place, Peter meets Amy - who now resembles a teenager.
Blah blah blah, things happen and Peter, Amy, and his ragtag group of merry men decide they have to go to Colorado. Their resident whiz kid, Michael, discovers a radio broadcast that's been asking for Amy to be returned. PILGRIMAGE.
Cronin spends about a third of the book talking about the lives of minor characters. I think this was some idea of his that giving extraneous information would flesh out each individual, but uh, no. Perhaps instead of giving me the detailed history of Galen Strauss, he could have made me empathize more with Peter. Or Amy, for that matter. Instead Peter wanders through the desert, shooting virals and struggling with his inner thoughts and exclaiming the idiotic word "flyers!", while Amy mumbles cryptic phrases that confuses the shit out of everyone.
And seriously, flyers?! I don't know why Cornin didn't choose OLIVE OIL or PIG TESTICLES or MAGNETS. They might have sounded less stupid as profanity than flyers.
There's no doubt that Cronin sets up a dark and interesting premise for this story. The first part of this book is terrifying. And his prose is not bad, but perhaps too poetic and long-winded. Most of this reads like a cheap Hollywood blockbuster. Except boring. I cannot even understand how his editor didn't take a box cutter to half of what was written.
I spent most of the book trying to puzzle out how Cronin won a PEN/Hemingway award because trudging through the later half of this book was a trial. I can't believe there are two other monstrous volumes left in this trilogy. I'm torn between curiosity and absolute dread. I suppose I'll have to see.
WHY WHY WHY DID I DO THAT??
A month or so ago, I was trolling around Audible, looking for a great value for my one-credit-a-month plan. The front page was advertising The Passage with great enthusiasm, and I like apocalypses as much as the next girl, so I bought it.
It started off well enough. The government is experimenting with a virus strain from vampire bats in Bolivia. They've reached the stage where they need human subjects and send a FBI agent named Wolgast to collect twelve death-row inmates. Each of the twelve are injected with the virus and morph into these creepy, human-esque creatures with glowing orange eyes and a taste for blood. They also possess incredible strength and are super difficult to kill. The army wants to use them as super weapons in the Middle East. GREAT IDEA, RIGHT, ARMY??
Basically, the Twelve break out because it turns out that they can sneak into weak-willed people's dreams, and start infecting people by the hundreds. This infection soon spreads across the entire continental US, decimating the population, and turning millions of individuals into virals as well. However, the reader is let in on a little secret - a six-year-old girl named Amy is the 13th subject to be infected, but she doesn't become a viral. She just develops a great complexion and long life and can sometimes read minds and shit.
THEN 100 YEARS PASS. WE HAVE TO ENDURE AN EPICALLY LONG JOURNAL ENTRY FROM AN OLD WOMAN RECALLING HOW HER PARENTS SAVED HER FROM THE VIRALS.
...And we're introduced to the First Colony in California, populated by characters that all blend in together and that you could hardly care about.
I think the protagonist was supposed to be Peter Jaxon, a young man who has, in a true cliched fashion, always lived in the shadows of his father and older brother. Peter is special because he's always felt that he's meant for ~*greater things*~. After what felt like years of Cronin discussing the First Colony and Peter's home life and the backgrounds of more or less every individual in the place, Peter meets Amy - who now resembles a teenager.
Blah blah blah, things happen and Peter, Amy, and his ragtag group of merry men decide they have to go to Colorado. Their resident whiz kid, Michael, discovers a radio broadcast that's been asking for Amy to be returned. PILGRIMAGE.
Cronin spends about a third of the book talking about the lives of minor characters. I think this was some idea of his that giving extraneous information would flesh out each individual, but uh, no. Perhaps instead of giving me the detailed history of Galen Strauss, he could have made me empathize more with Peter. Or Amy, for that matter. Instead Peter wanders through the desert, shooting virals and struggling with his inner thoughts and exclaiming the idiotic word "flyers!", while Amy mumbles cryptic phrases that confuses the shit out of everyone.
And seriously, flyers?! I don't know why Cornin didn't choose OLIVE OIL or PIG TESTICLES or MAGNETS. They might have sounded less stupid as profanity than flyers.
There's no doubt that Cronin sets up a dark and interesting premise for this story. The first part of this book is terrifying. And his prose is not bad, but perhaps too poetic and long-winded. Most of this reads like a cheap Hollywood blockbuster. Except boring. I cannot even understand how his editor didn't take a box cutter to half of what was written.
I spent most of the book trying to puzzle out how Cronin won a PEN/Hemingway award because trudging through the later half of this book was a trial. I can't believe there are two other monstrous volumes left in this trilogy. I'm torn between curiosity and absolute dread. I suppose I'll have to see.