Take a photo of a barcode or cover
script_fervor 's review for:
The Passage
by Justin Cronin
It had started off really well. It feels like a big Stephen King style thrill ride, but with an Iowa Writer's Workshop kind of flourish.
In my view the best part of reading "end of the world" books - "World War Z, "The Stand," "War Day," "Swan Song," etc. - is the evocation of panic in the reader. Panic that things are falling apart around your ears.
The best books of this type can take the massive scale of apocalypse and scale it so that it strikes to the heart of what it means to be human - a human losing everything, literally.
Cronin was able to create that feeling of the slide down the drain. The evacuations, the losing battles, the desperate measures put in place by the failing government. The survivor tales can be captivating if done right.
But about 250 pages in - the book shifts abruptly and for the worse. I won't reveal how or why, but I found it to become lesser than it was. I found the book picked up in action during the final 200 pages or so, but I was put off by the fact of this being a 1st book in a planned trilogy.
In my view the best part of reading "end of the world" books - "World War Z, "The Stand," "War Day," "Swan Song," etc. - is the evocation of panic in the reader. Panic that things are falling apart around your ears.
The best books of this type can take the massive scale of apocalypse and scale it so that it strikes to the heart of what it means to be human - a human losing everything, literally.
Cronin was able to create that feeling of the slide down the drain. The evacuations, the losing battles, the desperate measures put in place by the failing government. The survivor tales can be captivating if done right.
But about 250 pages in - the book shifts abruptly and for the worse. I won't reveal how or why, but I found it to become lesser than it was. I found the book picked up in action during the final 200 pages or so, but I was put off by the fact of this being a 1st book in a planned trilogy.