By: Justin Cronin
Narrated by: Scott Brick, Adenrele Ojo, Abby Craden
Series: The Passage Trilogy, Book 1
Length: 36 hrs and 49 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Language: English
Publisher: Random House Audio

This thrilling novel kicks off what Stephen King calls “a trilogy that will stand as one of the great achievements in American fantasy fiction”.

Now a FOX TV series!

Named one of Paste’s best horror books of the decade.

Named one of the 10 best novels of the year by TIME and one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Esquire, U.S. News & World Report, NPR/On Point, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, BookPage, and Library Journal.

“It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born”.

An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival, The Passage is the story of Amy – abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued, and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape – but he can’t stop society’s collapse. And as Amy walks alone, across miles and decades, into a future dark with violence and despair, she is filled with the mysterious and terrifying knowledge that only she has the power to save the ruined world.

©2010 Justin Cronin (P)2010 Random House

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Can I say I liked the first chapter better than the rest of the book? It started off so promising. I was whiplashed when it went from an abandoned little girl and the story of her mother to a guy in the military. I was confused whether I’d switched books somewhere along the way.

It’s the end of the world, but not as we know it.  The rise of a zombie plague, and life in the aftermath, but a real cut above the usual hack-slash thrillers of the genre.  In fact I think it should have been three volumes.  It is enormous, but worth it.  A moving and involving story charting the fall of civilisation, then chronicling life in the new world a few generations later.  Really powerful stuff.

The novel is broken into 11 parts of varying lengths. The story itself is broken into two sections: the first and shorter section covers the origins of the virus and its outbreak, while the second is set 93 years after the infections, primarily following a colony of survivors living in California. Several narrative devices are used, including email, journal entries, newspaper reports, and other documents. Occasional use is made of reference material from 1,000 years after the outbreak, coming from “The Journal of Sara Fisher”, sourced from a future “University of New South Wales, Indo-Australian Republic”.

The U.S. government is conducting a top secret experiment referred to as “Project Noah” which involves acquiring and transporting death row inmates to a secret military compound in Colorado, ostensibly for the purposes of testing a drug intended to greatly prolong life. These genetic experiments originate from patient zero, Tim Fanning—one of two surviving members of an expedition investigating a Bolivian bat-carried virus. The virus, while causing hemorrhagic fever and death in those who initially contracted it, results in a boosting of the immune system and enhanced strength and agility in the current subjects. It is later revealed that Project Noah is intended to produce weaponized enhanced humans for the military, described as “the ultimate bunker busters”.

Where does our orphan girl fit in? Dr. Lear theorizes that as Amy’s immune system has not had the chance to mature it will form a symbiosis with the virus and live with her symbiotically, instead of the violent forms it has taken with the other twelve. Ethical? No? Required to test mutagens on live subjects? No. It looks like none of the testing went through the proper channels which are there for a reason. Lear reminded me of Dr. Mendele, easily experimenting on human beings who had no other choice. Either take a test, or die.

Zero (AKA Fanning) and the other twelve inmates mentally take control of their guards and escape their quarantine cells, rapidly killing all who stand in their way. Amy is rescued by Brad Wolgast (the FBI agent who brought her to Noah) and Sister Lacey (a nun who was looking after Amy when she was recruited). Lacey is taken by Carter, as Wolgast and Amy escape to a mountain retreat where they live for several months, occasionally picking up news of the contagion spread throughout America. The rest of the world’s fate is not stated, but it is mentioned that most European nations have imposed quarantine and closed their borders.

This reminded me a lot of The Girl with all the Gifts * M.R. Carey and a little bit of The Stand by Stephen King (2020 Edition)

I personally found the book tedious and it could have been done better as three volumes than one mega one. It fails to sustain the momentum it builds up with the virus spreading and even now, in the post-pandemic world, it feels somehow half-assed.

As they say, there’s nothing better than an origin story. I loved the beginning. I hated the chunky rest of the book dealing with the world almost a century later and dealing with the too-familiar landscape of post-apocalyptic survival. Survivors * Terry Nation was excellent, After: The Shock, A post-apocalyptic thriller by Scott Nicholson was also good. This story though was promising but failed to deliver. 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 one character say out loud what any reader might wonder about how a particular event transpired.

My advice would be avoid the hype (or the 36h journey listening to this drivel)