Random Passage an Epic Tale of Love and Survival and Review
THE PASSAGE is a lot like the month of March. Information technology comes in similar a vampire thriller and goes out like a batty soap opera. And it'south big! Spreading its bat wings, it measures in at 766 pages (or at to the lowest degree the ARC version does). TWILIGHT this own't, and regular vampire fare it isn't either. It's a hodgepodge of Bram Stoker, Tom Clancy, Stephen King, and John Steinbeck: one if by vampires, two if past military games, three if past bloodbath, and iv if by brotherly melodrama. Overall I liked it. Honest. I don't read 766 pages during the school yr easily. "Big Mo" (that's "Momentum" to you young folk) carried me through every bit the Laws of Physics applied. Meaning? Cronin got this off to such a ill start that the activity carried me. I couldn't put it down. The opening plot line was simple: Dr. Strangelove goes to South America to detect the cure for death and instead turns it loose. Y'all tin can always count on your military brass for that sort of screw up, no? You encounter, they wanted a serum from these derailed vampires living deep in the jungles (only why didn't they migrate and take in... er, over... the earth, like they did afterwards in the book?) and so they could excerpt the GOOD part of vampirism (yous know, extended life, superhuman strength, and damn nigh indestructibility) without the bad role (bad skin, bad breath, restricted diet, No Go out signs in the Mortality Room, etc.). The idea was to give the serum to U.S. soldiers and then look out world! That's right, the USA would be able to kick some North Korean slash Al Qaedan slash Taliban barrel! Yous know the drill, though: the best laid plans of bats and uniformed men.... At their undercover Telluride, CO, fortress, the Army injects 12 death row inmates and 1 special picayune 6-twelvemonth-old girl (hint: central to the book) and keeps them nether lock and key (and 12-foot steel walls and multiple doors so on) for ascertainment. Simply the hanging upside downwards old prisoners, at present "virals" (that's the word for them in this tome), are playing with their guards' minds considering they want to come up out and play. Can you say "telepathic disaster"? Uh-huh. All hell breaks loose and the score winds up being Hell 1 and U.S. Ground forces 0. Here's where the book takes wing. These nasty hobbits come up out of nowhere and rip you open up similar a can of beets. Every couple of dozen victims are merely "scratched" on the throat then they tin can become part of the Viral Army. And soon America equally nosotros know information technology and honey it turns into Cormac McCarthy PlayLand. Aye. Information technology's THE Road all over again. Dystopia with teeth. And compelling stuff, too. We go to various outposts where certain humans take figured out sure ways to survive. Lights, chiefly. Because the virals are creatures of the dark and don't similar the spotlight. Where the wheels start to wobble is halfway through. Of a sudden Cronin plays fast and loose with his own rules. Suddenly a viral attack develops more than two possible results (expiry and the equivalent of taxes – being a vampire for life). Suddenly "the skillful guys" (i.e. major characters) are given preferential treatment. And he delves more deeply into the social life of our hearty crew of humans, too, including a fraternal rivalry between bros named Theo and Peter. This is the Steinbeck role -- East of Eden, W of Transylvania. Here Cronin gets a little also sentimental for my tastes, too, specially with the unmarried "good vampire" Amy, who has none of the bad attributes (elongated bicuspids, penchant for Bloody Marys) but all the good ones (extended life, telepathic abilities, the keys to the metropolis and the book, etc.). In the end, the virals become less scary, the purse loses some of its punch, and you're flipping pages but to find out how Cronin ties this mess together. Then, when you go to the promised land, you lot meet that he doesn't. Then you run across on the Internet that this is the merely the first of three books. Then you lot say, "Oh, no!" and ask yourself how in hell a book just south of 800 pp. would ever need a sequel when it'southward too long by far already. Finally, you collect yourself and recall where you are – the United States of A-Royalties. This, afterwards all, is supposed to be the Summer Blockbuster of 2010! This, after all, is supposed to be coin in Cronin's (and Random House'southward) banking concern! This is a volume already in the cinematic pipelines with Ridley Scott equally manager. Fasten your seat belts, then. Get home before dark and pay your electrical bill, also. This won't be the last yous hear of THE PASSAGE. Five stars for the first half, three for the second. I'll rate it down the middle and let you judge this glorious, bloody mess for yourself.
Oh, The Passage. You promised me such wonderful things with your sparkly encompass, your titillating title (a passage to WHERE??), and your massive hype. Also your sizable heft, equally you are a big, obese book, full of words and things. I figured if I didn't like you, I could use you to stone evil-doers in some boondocks foursquare somewhere. How could I turn you downward? Your promises, though, were only partially fulfilled. While I enjoyed stoning people in the hamlet foursquare with you, your cover was simply too pretty to be true, and your title too vague to really *hateful* anything. I nonetheless don't know what the passage was, but it was full of vampire-things and massive doses of graphic symbol backstory that also didn't really *mean* anything... except make you lot a very, very heavy book. Brick-like, really. I believe side by side I'll tie a ransom note to y'all and throw yous through a window, just for the giggles. Yous had such lovely backstory, such vivid characters in your opening quarter, I couldn't put you down. Well, I could, because y'all are a fatass and my arms grew lethargic and weak after about an hr, but figuratively speaking. I was hooked, and I loved you for it. Vivid characters, shocking scenery, emotion. You had information technology all, babe. But then things changed. Oh, did they alter. You forgot your old means and introduced me to a whole slew of new characters. Characters that I didn't care most, in a state of affairs that seemed so afar and unreal compared to your sharply defined predecessors that I thought perhaps I was reading a different book. Gone were the tardily nights of voracious reading. Gone were my massive biceps developed from holding you at a readable height. I slogged through you, sometimes telling friends that y'all were "getting better," fifty-fifty daring to say "really good again" in whispered tones... only you would then disappoint, like a canis familiaris who is allergic to grass, and I would yell angrily at perfect strangers that you were a meandering, lame book with stupid characters and unbelievable situations. I finished you, though, because I had devoted a ameliorate role of the yr reading you, and I had to run across it through. Similar climbing Everest, I merely wanted to *jiff* again, just I knew I had to cease yous anyway. And encounter you through I did, to an ending that only gear up you upwards for a sequel, likely total of more than meaningless backstory and characters painstakingly adult over 100's of pages only to be forgotten or rendered unimportant. I did non spend iii weeks reading y'all to get a cliffhanger, damnit. !@#$ you, The Passage. !@#$ you. Cheerio, The Passage. You were a good workout, and my human-arms thanks. Just you were bit of a slog and kind of boring. Sad.
The other forenoon, my girl called, crying, and said, "I only did something terrible." I froze. As a parent, these words could hateful anything. I waited. "I striking a auto. I was trying to motility over considering the street was narrow. I hit someone's mirror. I panicked. I but took off. I'thousand tardily for piece of work already. They'll fire me if I'one thousand late. I know I damaged the mirror. I experience atrocious." This was all delivered in pieces, every bit she was weeping past now. During this, I go into parental stream of consciousness: "Thank God. No i's hurt. She'southward not hurt. She left the scene. What does that mean? What do I do? What do I do? Problem? Fines? Tickets? Jail? Oh my God. Coin. Trouble, Money, money, coin. Trouble, trouble, trouble.... ...And then, the devil's words: Did anyone meet you? Merely that'due south not what I said. I heard myself say, "Tin yous get back and exit a note on the windshield?" More wailing, "Noooo. I'chiliad late now. They'll fire me. I know information technology." "All right. Okay. Y'all have to report this. I'll find out what you need to do. Information technology's okay. Go to work. It'll be okay." Of course, I had no idea if information technology would be all correct. I'1000 in Wisconsin; she's in Minneapolis, and I started to make phone calls. The get-go officer was a huge help. He said he didn't know what the rules were, just she'd LEFT THE SCENE OF AN Accident. I said she panicked, she feels terrible, she'south sobbing. He said, "It doesn't matter whether she's crying, laughing, grin. She LEFT THE SCENE OF AN Blow. That'south a crime." My centre was pounding, and I wanted to say, "Look you Neanderthal fuck. She killed a mirror. Could you be human for a moment?" An hour or so afterward, I finally reached the right people, and the sergeant assured me she was not in trouble, took my name, number and hers, and said she should report information technology equally soon as possible. …Situation handled, I suppose. Only I kept thinking of my first idea, and what I nearly said, Did anyone run into you? Ballsy neglect. I'g fatigued to apocalyptic fiction, and one of the reasons why is that characters are often tested, and The Passage is no exception. Faced with temptation or in the clutch of terror, characters succeed or fail. While the book has compelling moments, as well often Cronin starts to develop a character simply never really completes the task. With such a large assortment of characters, this needs to be done. You desire to empathize with the characters, and they need to be distinct enough so that you lot can proceed them all straight. I problem – and this may sound small – merely it collection me crazy, was Cronin's disability to handle dialogue. With the exception of the soldiers, who spoke in an exaggerated armed services way, many of the characters sounded the same. Also, they seemed to have one expletive: flyers, which referred to something horrible in their midst. Accordingly, virtually of the characters, when excited, would begin a sentence by saying, "Flyers, what will we do?" or "Flyers, did you see annihilation?" It was absurd. Picture, for example, something horrible in our lives. Sarah Palin, for example, and then motion-picture show her being able to survive, as she is, for decades. Would we all suddenly beginning using "Palins" equally our but expletive, and and so placing this word only at the beginning of a judgement? "Palins, hot enough for you lot?" or "Palins, we should get moving!" No, for starters, though Palin has been on the international scene just shy of ii years, we've been pretty artistic in coming up with variations on her name: Imagine the variations nosotros'd conjure upwardly after decades. Just why Cronin thought having most of his characters use this one expletive (flyers) baffled me, but I as well started to wince every fourth dimension someone used it. I wanted to like this book. I'm a sucker for apocalyptic books where science-screws-up-big-time, starting with books as intellectually thoughtful as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein right downwardly to Richard Preston's The Hot Zone. And, the book gets off to a expert start. The first tertiary of the volume is quite good—the plot moves forward, and characters are developed. Then, you attain Part III, which begins with a long military machine report that sucks out whatever momentum the book had attained. And Cronin does this sort of affair far likewise oft. He'll get the plot moving and then deaden it by letting a military report or pages and pages of someone'due south diary (in italics! I hate fucking italics!) stand up in for the plot he should take developed. This is poor writing, poor pacing, and piss-poor editing. For a couple hundred pages, the book crawls. It gets into gear in spurts, which are again muffled with boring reports or italicized diaries. Cronin'southward book, which had promise, lacks the rich label needed for such a long book, fails to sustain momentum, and has moments – particularly at the beginning of new sections - of horribly overwritten passages, such as this sentence fairly early in the book, which introduces Chapter 15: Worst volume in the globe? Not at all. Cronin has talent, which he needs to develop, and—most of all—he needs to larn how to footstep a novel, and not cheat by having climactic scenes told in the class of dry reports or diary entries.
Later, Keith Olbermann's words, "WORST PERSON IN THE WO-O-R-R-Fifty-50-D!!!" would echo in my head.~ Caribou Barbie
~Failin' Palin
~the Thrilla from Wasilla
~Palin bailin'
~Bible Spice
~Deranged asshat (…deplorable, that'due south just me)"When all time concluded, and the world had lost its memory, and the man that he was had receded from view like a ship sailing abroad, rounding the blade of the globe with his old life locked in its concord; when the gyring stars gazed down upon nothing…"
This sentence, already painful, continues for another 37 words.
(3.5) This was a wild ride! I've been going through my list of "post-apocalyptic books to read" and this i had been recommend to me so much that I had to read information technology. Within the last year I read The Stand by Stephen Rex (disease) and Swan Song by Robert McCammon (nuclear state of war) so it'southward impossible for me not to compare them. In The Passage, the apocalypse happens though vampires (not the shiny type!). You get to encounter the before, during and after through the eyes of a few characters and writing-wise it did remind me a flake of SK. I understand why in that location's an abridged version - this book is very long and I honestly felt a bit exhausted later on reading it. I do recommend information technology if you're someone that likes graphic symbol driven books since, while there is quite a bit of action, you go to follow them while they go through a lot. While it wasn't my all time favorite mail-apocalyptic book, I am open to reading the remainder of the series! Shoutout to the author for making the villain phone call women "females" and making the male characters think it sounds like he's talking about livestock. Can't look to hear your thoughts as this was our first buddy read in the Fox Book Club!
Epic . . . very, very Epic! I feel like I simply read near 5 books. Not because information technology was long, but just because there is and then much story here that changes direction so many times. I cannot believe there are still two books to become . . . I hateful, I can believe it considering there is more than story to tell, merely how much more than epic can this get!? 4.5 out of 5 stars This i lost a little for me in the middle due to a blah transition that acquired me to lose involvement for a menstruation of time. Looking back after knowing what happened, information technology makes sense, merely it was dull for a bit. So, if y'all are reading this review before y'all read the volume, know that y'all should not give upward if you get bored in the center . . . this likewise shall pass! In add-on to being epic, this was corking story telling. And, despite the size, at that place really wasn't filler. Each folio, each paragraph, each sentence had its place and kept the story moving (even during the blah part!). From deep, meaningful conversations to gore-filled action sequences, the story was e'er moving on to the next identify and had me hungry to notice out what was next. If y'all like post-apocalyptic and monster stories, but need a new twist and are not afraid to invest a lot of fourth dimension, you should read this. I guarantee that you volition relish it!
One of the virtually amazing horror/fantasy novels I´ve read, combining first-class graphic symbol blueprint, very complex subplots, and amazing wordbuilding to something in the league of G R R Martin, Male monarch, and Sanderson. That´s why professional person creative writing matters Finetuning and precision Tastes differ, but it is a masterpiece. And Stephen King! Even more than King And information technology has everything, apocalypse, post-apocalypse, pre-apocalypse, fashionable monsters, evil scientists, piddling girls, nasty cliffhangers, and a dark tone that creeps out of each drastic page. Inappreciably ever so many dead copse flew by and so quickly and the intensity of the works stays in reminiscence for a long fourth dimension later finishing it. And it´s only the first function! Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
This Iowa writers workshop Cronin studied in must be a wondrous place, enabling people to write like that. Cronin is a prime instance of how the perfection of writing techniques tin can exist learned because he studied and taught artistic writing and tuned his work to perfection, culminating in this overkill.
Information technology´southward the intensity of the characterization, the many circuitous plots, and the always fine apocalyptic setting that brand it a must-read. And there is still then much of it left in my memory after having read it a while ago, usually a very adept sign that the stuff was of good quality. Another thing one realizes after finishing is how accurate plotting and planning tin meet vivid protagonists and worldbuilding without any lengths in a brick of a book.
It´south a bit of a subjective field, because some seem to detect the very detailed descriptions and the extent of the volume too much, too wordy, not quick enough, non so greatly written, things King has to bargain with as well. Only information technology kind of reflected his style and then much that I must say that I am too heavily biased and possibly incapable to be objective about this one, considering I like both the old, classic authors that inspired King and the new ones who name him as an inspiration, are suggested by him, or are compared with him. Kind of a King OCD obsession I definitively shouldn´t become checked because I have no freakings issues. Information technology seems as if i has to exist into that kind of writing fashion and very long books in general, if not, information technology could be a thwarting instead of a revelation.
This work has been compared with Stephen Kings´ The Stand and I must say that all together, the atmosphere, the plot, the characters, the intensity, the mega folio-turning rage, make it worth to be compared with the grandmaster. I also couldn´t name a like mail service apocalyptic book of that quality.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
The hype machine was working. With some terrific reviews, this was immediately ane of THE BOOKS TO READ for summer 2010, a vampire tale not written by Stephanie Meyer, and not even promoted very much as vampiric. Maybe our capacity for reading vampire novels has clotted somewhat? The world in question begins in 2022. Gas is $13 a gallon. Iranian jihadists take killed hundreds at the Mall of America. Jenna Bush is Texas guv (this is a horror story, later on all). New Orleans, battered by another monster storm, is at present an uninhabitable industrial park. An expedition to a remote corner of South America, sponsored by the Usa Regular army, is searching for a promising and unsafe virus. What could peradventure go wrong? That said, I felt that in that location were well-nigh 2 complete, independent books within the whole. The get-go tells of the beginning of the unpleasantness, lasts for 246 pages and is gripping. I hated to put the volume down. Even with the been-there-read-that aspect of the volume, there was something well-nigh the writing of that 246 pages that kept me turning the pages, thirsty for more. As for the remaining 520, not so much. We motion frontwards almost a century and enter the too-familiar landscape of post-apocalyptic survival. Although there were elements here that were interesting, some characters that held hope, I institute it a very, very long yawn. I likewise felt that the author cheated a few times too many in leading us to believe that certain events had taken place when they had not. He even jokes about it in the writing, having 1 character say out loud what whatever reader might wonder near how a particular result transpired. If I gave it two stars instead of ane because the beginning was so good. Otherwise, I resented the time information technology took to read this waaaaaay likewise long book.
when i read horror, i'1000 unremarkably looking for: (one) cheap thrills or (2) surreal and metaphysical weirdness or, best of all, there is plenty of the first sort and so much of it is trash. but fun tin can exist had with trashy things and i'1000 no snob. the second blazon tin can be a piffling more hard to find, but there's a lot to be had as well, if yous look in the right places, especially the past. merely the third kind, that'southward the hardest, i've just found a few. Declare, It, The Terror. and The Passage. in a lot of horror, i'k not exactly eager to slowly lose myself in the globe depicted - the experience is ofttimes more than similar a rollercoaster or a fun nightmare. but that concluding category, those mournful sagas - they are my special favorites. i may not want to alive in a novel's earth, just if it is a world that is so carefully crafted and so grown, one filled with tragedy and sadness and coming together and coming undone... i notice it very like shooting fish in a barrel to get lost in those worlds. information technology is a great feeling. and so on to The Passage. it is an excellent novel, complete with multi-leveled characters, spiritual mysteries, exciting action fix pieces, and the trappings of several genres (vampire, post-apocalypse, and in the kickoff third, an on-the-run-from-the-government-style thriller). the writing is solid, well-crafted, and certainly in no rush. particularly outstanding is the depth of characterization present in even small-scale or elusive characters such equally the scientist Lear or the child molestor Gray. the offset 3rd of the novel is pretty much perfect, tightly-paced yet generous with motivation and context, and featuring three of the most warmly written and sympathetic characters i've come beyond in a while: Amanuensis Wolgast & Sister Lacey & Anthony Carter: fallen agent, unearthly nun, misunderstood criminal. the empathy created by the author for these 3 and the depth of their background stories... i just really was non expecting that and it was wonderful to experience. unlike many other readers, i felt the remaining ii-thirds were very strong, moving easily between a wide range of physical and emotional landscapes, from circuitous globe-building to pointed irony to moments of eerie beauty to straight-up horror (particularly in the Haven sequence). although it could exist said that characterization was a scrap less rich in the last 2-thirds, the range of emotions depicted was ofttimes on a wider and more dynamic calibration - the reader is able to watch characters actually grow and alter. i appreciated Cronin'south vampires. they certainly run against the current grain! although the threat of their baroque, bestial presence looms over the entire novel, they remain enjoyably enigmatic and largely in the background. i assume the amount of attention paid to the vampire Babcock and his traumatic by (also very well washed) will exist paralleled in the sequels by depictions of the remaining vampires. The Passage has been compared to The Stand; personally i recollect The Passage is superior. my only real issue is the very ending, which could come up beyond as cheaply ironic and unnecessarily brutal if it wasn't articulate that this is only book 1 of iii. i presume that this agonizing cliffhanger of an ending will eventually exist resolved with the aforementioned sensitivity and grace brought to the residuum of the novel'south various episodic sequences.
(3) an ballsy full of dread and melancholy .
Pretty cool!! 😊💕 
At the beginning of this book I was pretty sure it would be a 5* read. In the middle I was losing the will to read on and thought it would do well to wring 3* from me. By the end I requite it a hearty 3* but just can't bring myself to offer 4. And so, this is a vampire book without the sparkling, the forever sexy trope, or the stalker-horror vibe. Cronin's writing reminded me a lot of Stephen Male monarch, though with a more literary edge (which is not to say that Rex doesn't take a literary edge ... he does, and in many ways it's his popular success that blinds a lot of 'serious' readers to King's writing chops). Cronin writes very adept prose. He is rather besides wordy for my gustation and spends too long getting around to things, simply he writes some excellent lines and has a poet'southward sensibilities. The book comes in many sub divisions but for me it breaks into three primary parts. Outset there is the pre-disaster section where we dive in great detail into the lives of a handful of protagonists while slowly bringing them together for the "vampire stuff". The amount of fourth dimension spent on these individuals makes you sure that they are going to be the pillars of this story. Which makes it rather a shock when you all of a sudden leave them all behind and start off with an entirely new and larger set of characters far away in fourth dimension and space. The second section, the colony, is where I started to lose involvement. At that place were merely and so many characters and then few reasons for me to care about them. Additionally the point of view hops around between them regularly, which I found distancing and made it hard for me to adhere to anyone. I establish this section particularly wordy and slow moving. Cronin is using these people and their detailed individual stories to indirectly pigment a larger flick of the world we observe ourselves in ... I understand that. And if it had been half the length with the focus on half the characters I would have been much more taken with information technology. Equally it was it was a nifty relief when things started to get tits up and the scroll call began to diminish quickly. The third and final section is the quest, and here I found myself much more than invested. The interest level started to climb along with the tension, and I was pleased with myself to have predicted the existence of something that I felt was the literary inheritor of "the new warren" from Watership Downwardly. Notwithstanding, the pace was still sluggish and Cronin takes an historic period to get us anywhere. Some will say that this is a book about characters rather than plot, and that's fair enough. I like character driven stories. I similar stories about characters. It's just that in this detail book I found the plot far more than interesting than the characters. And finally, the book ends. But non with an bang-up bargain of resolution. It'due south very much a volume 1 of a serial (trilogy?). I tin can only think that some of the massive character building at the start of the book, that then vanished downwards a hole never to exist spoken of again, may come to fruition in later on books ... I'm looking at yous Carter. So yeah... Strong literary writing, a nifty imagination, only just too very many multitudinous words, too slowly meanderingly point declining to get toingly ponderously paced for this detail reader. EDIT: And one small merely crazy detail ... the merely expletive discussion they seem to own is fliers. I don't know if the editors were aiming for a PG rating but with then much time taken to build believable characters the dialogue seemed laughably clean and the appearance of "fliers" grew steadily more comical. Bring together my three-emails-a-year newsletter #prizes .…...
Displaying 1 - 10 of 20,079 reviews
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6690798-the-passage
0 Response to "Random Passage an Epic Tale of Love and Survival and Review"
Post a Comment