The Passage by Justin Cronin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I am so unhappy with this read. The first part of this story had me captivated. I loved the mystery. I loved the bittersweet story of a single mom who has to give up a child in order to save her. I was creeped out by the description of a bloody attack in the jungle. I really liked where this was going. Or rather, where I thought it was going. It had all of my favorite thriller ingredients: Scientific expedition gone horribly wrong, a bloody massacre, a special child, government evil, plague, and a reluctant hero.
Then the third part of the story starts off several years into the future with the aftermath of a plague. A complete cast of characters I don’t know jack about and no reference to the characters I was interested in to begin with. I was willing to accept the “temporary” jump in to a bleak future and was anticipating a tie-in but I read and read and it wasn’t happening. I didn’t particularly like the new characters and felt like I was dumped into this new environment without a kiss. The author goes from a fast moving, action packed writing story to a slow, over-detailed and uninteresting plot.
I really tried to keep going with this.I wanted this story to entertain me but I ended up skimming like crazy hoping to catch a whiff of the previous two parts. No luck.
I felt abandoned.(Or maybe someone else stepped in to write at the end. Kinda like when Bela Lugosi died during filming and a taller, bigger Boris Karloff filmed the rest of the movie with his back to the camera. Awkward.)
If anyone has actually finished this and is willing to let me know what the hell happened I would welcome the information but I am not gonna torture myself for it.
I gave this two stars based on the first part of the book. If it had started with the second half one star.
NovelOpinion 
Amy
February 5, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Hi There,
DON’T bother finishing. It has some less-than-awful parts, but all-in-all it never gets back to the good stuff from the beginning. I felt the same way you had, very very captivated and attached to the characters at the beginning. I think Cronin got his book financially covered for publication with the beginning and just gave up on writing completely for the last 500 pages. *Spoiler alert* Wolgast becomes a vampire, for all of a paragraph about 6 pages from the end before he dies. Also Lacy comes back as someone who had hung out with one of the doctors from the chalet to kill Babcock. I am searching the internet for someone who can pull this crap all together, but it really is just like Cronin started doing acid and making up 100 new characters to not give a crap about for the next 500 pages. I won’t be reading another one of his books after this crap.
novelopinion
February 5, 2012 at 7:02 pm
Thanks Amy! If you get it figured out, let me know. lol