The Passage

I first read The Passage many years ago and absolutely loved it. It's a sprawling, epic tale about vampires. It stretches from coast to coast and covers about 100 years, from the time when the vampires first appeared to when the resistance to them starts to actually be effective. There's a lot in this book, especially since it has to establish two entirely different casts of characters a century apart from each other, linked only by the girl Amy, humanity's last hope.

Because thus book has such a wide scope, it is occasionally pretty slow. Because of that, I think it held up better on the re-read. It didn't drag nearly as much as I remembered, mostly because I knew where it was headed and why Cronin was slowing down to include the details he was. The end result is a very rich book about a rampant virus and vampires and the near end of the world. It's about humanity's ability to hang on to hope even when all hope is lost, and to keep fighting even when we know we're going to lose.

I'll admit that I'm biased towards this book, loving vampires as much as I do. Cronin does an excellent job of weaving together the various vampiric myths and making them his own, creating truly frightening creatures that are, never-the-less, not impossible to kill. The mythology and world-building are only surpassed by the stunning array of characters, each managing to be a complete and individual person, despite there being so many of them.

I'm glad I came back to this book after so many years, not that the rest of the trilogy has been released. I'd forgotten that it ended on a cliffhanger, and I'm eager to see what happens next.

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