The Passage

Whatever the creatures are in Justin Cronin’s THE PASSAGE they aren’t vampires. Bloodsucking, mind infecting monsters that live in a hierarchical society may seem to be the pinnacle of the undead, but the Virals, which is one of the many names the remaining humans end up calling the monsters, are closer in resemblance to the fast moving zombies of 28 DAYS LATER then Dracula.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we get to savor the fear of what is hunting us in the dark we must understand the terrifying catastrophe that is the hubris of man and the folly of science. The first part of THE PASSAGE takes place in the near future where the United States has military checkpoints along the interstate highways and Jenna Bush is the governor of Texas. Various plotlines converge to bring Amy, a six year old girl who already has a preternatural air about her, to an extra-government secret research facility in Colorado where scientists are working on Project NOAH and attempting to engineer super soldiers from a virus and twelve convicted men. Super soldiers in a beyond the radar research facility? What could possibly go wrong? Special Agent Wolgast certainly doesn’t wonder about the legality of infecting the condemned men he is asked to pick up until that is he is asked to escort test subject number thirteen, Amy, to the Project NOAH site.
For reasons unknown because this is the first book of a trilogy, Amy doesn’t respond to the virus in the same way as the other subjects do, but before any real science can be done, the rest of the subjects have started to take over the lab with gnashing of teeth and the tearing of necks. The pair escapes and head to the mountains of Oregon where they await what is certainly the end of the world.
And thus we skip ahead 92 years in the future to one of the few remaining human settlements, at least in California but as far as anyone knows this could be the last group in the world called The First Colony. Protected by a series of lights and batteries which have been running for twenty years past their expiration date, a few of the folk of this homestead realize that unless they find a new power source or some batteries worth holding a charge that soon there will be one less group of humans left on the planet. When Amy appears at their gate one night, a group of young people lead by younger brother Peter Jaxon, believe that she is important enough to risk leaving the settlement to bring her back to what was formerly Colorado. In a series of episodes, they risk life and limb, journey to Las Vegas (where they mistake a casino for a church), encounter other humans, some who have made deals with the Virals and some who are fighting them, and eventually figure out what they need to do to save their world. Also, that Jenna Bush must have been a halfway decent at her job because Texas is also one of the few places where humans have been staging a resistance (I’m inferring here about the Jenna part). The second half of The Passage suffers the most from being a set up to something larger, this is the first book of a trilogy and it begins to feel like an early boss level of a video game. They know now what they have to do, but the emotional gambit that Cronin keeps promising never happens. Neither is there any explanation about the nature of the virus or about the nature of Amy.
Seasoned readers of horror and thrillers or anyone who has read Cormac McCarthy might find many parts of this work derivative. Many of the scenes come across as set pieces and there are very little surprises and certainly nothing innovative. Nor is Cronin one for making his character’s motivations ambiguous. It’s not fair to say that his characters aren’t complex because the good ones are allowed to have a variety of motivations, but the good guys do things for right and noble reasons. The characters that aren’t good are either over the top bad that one wonders how the good guys just keep missing the neon sign over some new person’s head blinking ‘e-v-i-l.” Or else they’re people who act irrationally and lose their heads in a panic rather than think, take a deep breath and stay calm. The good guys may do stupid things but only because it seemed like the best strategic course of action.
This is all quibbling, of course. Cronin is an experienced author who has won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize and this book was hyped heavily at the Book Expo America. He doesn’t leave you torn between turning the page and banging your head against the wall because the writing is that bad. In fact, his prose is one of the reasons why you turn the page. But more than that, he is a good story teller and after 800 pages, the end (which may be the most manipulatively brilliant/cheating cliff hanger ever) comes much too soon.
At this time, I don’t want to say that this isn’t a serious book, because maybe by the end of the trilogy it will have become so, but THE PASSAGE is a perfect summer read. It has all the qualities of a summer blockbuster movie but is by far far more entertaining.