First Edition, 766 pages
English language
Published June 8, 2010 by Ballantine Books.
IT HAPPENED FAST. THIRTY-TWO MINUTES FOR ONE WORLD TO DIE, ANOTHER TO BE BORN.
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse. As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her …
IT HAPPENED FAST. THIRTY-TWO MINUTES FOR ONE WORLD TO DIE, ANOTHER TO BE BORN.
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse. As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors, but for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—toward the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun. With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterly prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.
I liked it.
It made me think of The Stand from Stephen King. Ambiance-wise.
I thought the pacing was a bit slow sometimes and jumbledly quick in some action scenes. I had to go through some passages twice to understand what happened.
чудова до- і постапокаліптична епопея. за винятком фіналу, на який (як і багатьом іншим авторам, на жаль) кроніну не стало наснаги (деякі фрагменти притягнено за вуха і вельми недбало натягнено на ср..ку). в цілому — читається цікаво.
What a slog of a book this was. It was recommended as a tale in the vein of Stephen King's The Stand, one of my all-time favorites by Mr. King. I expected something similar. A tale of a world falling to a pandemic, and the tales of its survivors. What I got was a highly editable story that ends on a frustrating cliffhanger and makes me not want to continue, because...whatever.
There's absolutely nothing going on in huge parts of the book. The action doesn't really begin until about 250 pages in. Instead, we get pages and pages of exposition to characters that die shortly afterwards without leaving any impact on the story. What's the point?
The story picks up a bit once the pandemic (a sort of disease strain from bats that turns people into quasi-vampires) has wiped out most of the population of the US, and we get …
What a slog of a book this was. It was recommended as a tale in the vein of Stephen King's The Stand, one of my all-time favorites by Mr. King. I expected something similar. A tale of a world falling to a pandemic, and the tales of its survivors. What I got was a highly editable story that ends on a frustrating cliffhanger and makes me not want to continue, because...whatever.
There's absolutely nothing going on in huge parts of the book. The action doesn't really begin until about 250 pages in. Instead, we get pages and pages of exposition to characters that die shortly afterwards without leaving any impact on the story. What's the point?
The story picks up a bit once the pandemic (a sort of disease strain from bats that turns people into quasi-vampires) has wiped out most of the population of the US, and we get to meet the inhabitants of the Colony, a walled-in community in the Californian desert, descendants of children who were stuffed into a train by the army to be safe from the attacks of the Virals. Here at least we get to spend more time with the characters, e.g. Peter, the male protagonist for most of the book.
I started skimming after the half-way mark because all too often, you had to look for the thread of the plot swimming in a sea of meaningless exposition.
All in all, it was one of those frustrating books that I wanted to love, and simply couldn't.
Fantastic story. Can't wait for the second book.
I loved it. Great story - nothing overwhelmingly new, but an artful combination of themes and techniques used separately in countless other stories. I found myself deeply committed to some of the characters, although when I try to look at the book objectively, I'm not sure that character development is Cronin's strongest skill. So I'm not quite sure what I found so compelling.
This book reminded me constantly of Stirling's Change series - the obvious parallel is that they're both post-apocalyptic fiction, but the similarities seem to stop there, so again - not quite sure what's behind the strength of my reaction.
In short, I found it totally enthralling - I've never plowed through that many pages in that few days. Can't wait for the remaining books and the movies!!
