At the end of the book, heart in mouth and palms sweating from more than just the clammy English summer, I did something that I haven't done for a while - I found myself flicking a few pages back, skim reading again, turning the last page and staring at the last few blank pages. As if there was something I'd missed... As if by doing this I could make there be more or the promise of more...
Damn you, Cronin!
The Passage is a sprawling epic, very much in the style of Stephen King's The Stand, bringing a refreshing take on the vampire mythos that will have the Twi-hards shuddering... "I don't like it, they're not pretty like Edward, but maybe beneath the glow they have melancholy souls... Maybe if I give one a hug? God! Noooo! Garrrrrrrrrr-herrrrtzzzz... Blerg..." Sorry, a bit distracted there.
The Passage is the tale of a virus, found in bats in the arse-end of some evil heat-drenched jungle. Everything, as you would imagine when mixing said virus, government scientists and a tale of horror, goes horribly, bloodily wrong and gets wronger and wronger with every page. Until the Earth that once was, is gone and all that's left is a pocket of humanity, clinging to the light, no longer living, just surviving. Add to this a special child who seems older than her years, some feisty women, broken families, a brother with itchy feet, a geek or two and millions of glowing feral creatures that want to rip nine in ten of them apart - leaving one in ten with a bite that will forever change them...
This is The Passage.
This is the return of the Vampire as a thing to be feared.
This is a return to horror as a survival epic that makes us glad to be alive when-ever we close the pages.
This is a book that will infect you, just as those metallic teeth gently cut into the soft flesh of the one in ten spreading the disease, a biblio-bite that will leave you wanting more and wanting everyone else to read it as well.
I haven't felt like this for a while, felt exhausted from the journey of reading and catapulted from another universe at the end. Another world which though deadly and full of hurt, I miss and would re-enter in a heartbeat because I miss them, the people I met, the friends made and lost and the story left unsaid...
To say I loved The Passage wouldn't convey how I feel, parts of that book terrified me and I cried more than once. I think my reading life would have been less without it.
But there is a problem... I want more! And now! Luckily in an online interview Mr Cronin said that this wasn't a tale that could be told in one book, but something that would take three to accomplish...
So where is it?
What do you think you're doing, doing a US and UK tour to promote the book when you should be writing?
Seriously though, it's a great, scratch that, phenomenal, no... A superlative novel and I'd like to thank Mr Cronin and wish him all the best on his tour and with the next two books. Just... Faster would be better...
You can read about the creation of The Passage at the end of the product description of the book of Amazon and I can't help but think that it won't be too long before Justin Cronin's daughter, Iris, has a book out of her own...
Check out the following websites for some scary video footage of infected attacks and more info on the book and author:
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Justin Cronin will be appearing Monday 5th July at 6:30pm at Norwich Millennium Library, Norwich, UK. Tickets are £2 available from the library or Norwich Castle Street, (01603 767292). This may be our only chance to see him in this neck of the woods, before he becomes too cool for East Anglia and the infection becomes too widespread...
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