Book Review of "The Passage" By Justin Cronin

As a society we all sometimes worry that there is nothing new under the sun. This is how I felt while I was cyber strolling down the internet version of the bookstore. The feeling only grew as I saw the list of new releases under the horror section and realized that everything I was seeing seemed to be to horror what pre-pubescent singers are to music.

“Never judge a book by its cover” is a lie told to kids when they are young. At least when it comes to a book the cover should be high up there on how you should judge one, Graphic designers are trained to make images that convey the feeling and tone of books. The cover of “The Passage” told me everything I needed to know, by what was not there. There were no generic fashion models with photo shopped fangs and glowing red eyes leaning against a brick wall on a dirty street corner. Instead, all I saw was the name of the book, the author's name and an unpopulated winter forest as morning light lit up the night*.

On the cover alone I was sold, once I read that the book had vampires, viruses, and the end of the world I was grabbing my wallet and keys. The book was nothing short of a pleasure to read. From as early as page twenty-five you get to experience the writing talent Cronin contains to draw you deeper into the story with every character shift.

While “The Passage” has many strengths ranging from great pacing, vivid descriptions, and a full fleshed out view of a world we are not very far from the thing that stands out above all the rest is the characterization. Justin Cronin brings to the reader scores of characters who all have their own part to play in the whole narrative.

The truly remarkable talent that Cronin has mastered is the ability to write from the point of view of any of the characters from the righteous to the ruthless and all of the grey in between and make them understandable so quickly. This tends to happen so fast that within one page you can go from hating one character to fearing for what will happen to them. The development of his cast of characters and how they interact is one of the best skill’s Cronin is bringing to the table in this book.

With a well thought out look at how the world would react to a sudden attack of vampirism it feels that Justin Cronin is a talented biographer of the world from the near future rather than a gifted writer of fiction in the present.

“The Passage” is the first in a trilogy with the next book “The Twelve” to be released in 2012 and “The City of Mirror’s” to be released in 2014. A website dedicated to “The Passage” with downloadable images for everything from computer and Iphone wallpapers to Twitter icons and recent news can be found here. At findsubjectzero you can also follow the spread of the infection, watch discovered footage of attacks and read articles about the world that Justin Cronin has brought to us.