The Passage by Justin Cronin
 

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review

I am almost done with this audiobook, 29 cd's, about 40 hours in all

It is supposedly the first book in a trilogy, the movie rights have already been auctioned off.

This is a vampire apocalypse series. Imagine "the Stand" only instead of superflu humanity is subjected to military grade vamp virus.

Spoiler:
The first third of the book is a technothriller about the plan to design the vamp virus, the "something that goes wrong" at the military facility, and the immediate aftermath that pretty much destroys humanity. Very well done imo

The rest of the book jumps 90+ years into the future and involves a colony of survivors who get caught up in events and end some end up undertaking a journey (the second half of the book)

One criticism I have is that at times key events are written in non-linear redundant narrative. Same event told from 3 or 4 different perspectives, each somewhat overlapping, and often out of order. Kinda a wheel-of-time meets pulp fiction. A couple of times when this happens it leaves chronological inconsistencies and minor plotholes (not that it matters because almost every character is at least slightly insane)



If you want to grab a huge epic I would highly suggest this book. I wonder how they can reduce this one book into a single movie. the first third of the book could itself become most of a movie imo