Bookish Tuesday: The Passage

The Passage
by Justin Cronin

I haven't seen an actual copy of this book, but have read elsewhere that it's huge. It took a good long time to read, given my general free-time constraints, but managed to get through the lots of dots on my Kindle. Finishing it made me feel accomplished, in part because it's a big book, and in part because I wasn't really that into it toward the end. The second half really. It picked up, but not a lot, right at the end. Just to preemptively tell you my rating, it's kind of an "eh" three stars.

Let me explain a bit about what drew me to the book, because I genuinely don't read this sort of thing with any regularity. I heard the author interviewed on NPR by Neal Conan, a couple of times, and the book sounded interesting if only because it was inspired by the author's conversations with his daughter, who told him his other work (award-winning modern fiction with which I am not familiar) was boring. She wanted him to write a book about a girl who saves the world. So, together they mapped an outline for this story, and he began writing the first of what he envisioned as three books. He submitted the first 400 pages under a pseudonym to his publisher (details about that I don't know, so don't ask me) and they picked it up and paid him big bucks to finish it. Oh, and he also sold movie rights before the book was finished.

What the heck is this book anyway? It's a story about militarily-engineered viral vampires/zombies, who are super-fast, glow in the dark, don't die unless shot down the throat or decapitated, and very specifically keep some of their prey alive, to facilitate the continuation of their new "species." There is also a girl, infected similarly but not bloodthirsty, who we know will save the world that has fallen into a strange, post-apocalyptic chaos with small colonies in the hundred years after the vamps have escaped, multiplied, and destroyed at least the United States (who knows about the rest of the world that tried to quarantine the outbreak). Oh, and these vampire-zombies are ugly, really disgusting, do not hang out looking cute, and are adept at ESP, mind control, and communication through telepathy.

Elements of zombies, elements, of vampires, elements of the modern take on both (think 28 Days Later), elements of epic clan-based books that envision a different human existence... All totally out of the box for my general pile of books. I'm not even into Twilight and that crap.

I did really like the first half of the book. Oddly, the whole storyline leading up to the creation of the contagion, the creation of the creatures, their escape, and the existence of the world in which everything was frightening and falling apart was compelling reading. Sure, we are talking pulp. This is not fantastic literature or anything, but there were some interesting characters, interesting stories, and compelling plot lines to pull things along. And the world of the novel's opening sequences is also in the future, so while it felt a bit clumsy at times, there was a certain element of fantasy even in what was recognizable and mundane, so it was not just a story about the military (with the help of private contractors) making vampire-zombies.

The huge jump that happens at a certain point draws you about a hundred years into the future, into a world where a small colony of people has cobbled out an existence that relies on light for life - daylight and huge lights on barricades surrounding the compound at night to keep the vamps away. The new society has created strange rules, and has created some strange idioms that I never really bought, as they were reminiscent of what seemed like an attempt to create slang in Star Wars: Episode 1 when Anniken wouldn't shut up about "wizard!" and it fell flat.

It was hard to immediately connect with all of these new characters, because everyone you had come to know in the first half of the book was dead or disappeared. what I find interesting looking back is that by the time I did get through the last 400 pages or so, I had come to at least moderately care about the new characters, or at least be interested in their journey. And while there were plot points that were, well, cheesy or contrived, it did regain my interest in the final pages. I was curious at the very least, about where things were going and how they would get there. And I do want to know how this girl will save the world.

If I didn't know the basis for the book, I'd be done with it. But there is something really interesting to me about a story that was functionally co-imagined by a father and daughter, and which has a powerful girl as savior at the center. I also heard in the NPR interview that the subsequent books won't just pick up where this book left off, but rather take us back to the moment the world falls apart and pick up a thread, adding to the world we have come to know through the second part of this first book. Which sounds more interesting than just finding out how the girl saves the world in another 1600 pages. So in a couple of years when the next book arrives, I'll probably read it. OK, I will definitely read it, I am curious. While it's genuinely crap, it's engaging enough for bedtime or beach blanket reading.

I should note that I have a crazy love/hate relationship with both vampires and zombies. I get completely freaked out by them, to the point of panic attacks in the middle of the night, and terrible nightmares, but I also kind of love them. Not the sexy ones, the really scary ones. I don't really get that. I am terrified of spiders, but if you asked me to get near one or to watch a movie about them, I'd freak out, run away, and flip you the bird from across the room. For some reason, I'm finding these creepy guys compelling, and I'm even slightly interested in what happens with this movie they a making, because the book kind of reads like it was planned as the bones for a screenplay. It could be terrifying or awful; it all depends on how they handle it, but I guess I will have to wait and see about that too.

In terms of the meanings behind this book, you could read a lot of things into the subtext, but none of it is hidden, subtle, or interesting. I would say that maybe it could end up in a more interesting place, but I'm not holding my breath. This is the type of book that is aware of it's genre placement, the political implications of it's placement, and tries to have subtext, but it's all floating right on top. It's no The Road, which is actually a deeply felt meditation on the human condition, the environment, the world and how we live. It's just all right there. It won't move you, or even really make you think, but that's OK right?

Next week, more pulp, but fun pulp. I'm thinking I will reveal my love for British mystery in all it's glory, and revel in my love for the new-ish Flavia deLuce series by Alan Bradley, starting with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.