Books like The
Passage and Game of Thrones stuff always make me wonder how the author chooses
to kill off his characters, aka his babiezz! Oh really Mr. Cronin you choose to
( and these are made up names not from the book) you choose to do away with
sweet Pascal while Lucian gets to do beyond mortal tricks and get away with his
skin..pshhh…. This was a fun little brain kicker, some nasty vamps which I
actually wanted more of, sick no, and a nicely painted world with good story
potential for the next books, so here she be, the infamous, The Passage -
*4 out of 5 gold skulls
Nothing is
as constant as change
My favorite
part about The Passage is the sheer imagination of the story world itself and
how fresh it feels even though dystopia, fall of civilized man and vampires isn’t
anything new per say. After reading it I can safely admit that the story has
cradled itself inside my head like a big ball of yarn. I really do like having
it there for myself, tucked in my mind’s shelf as I enjoy revisiting it anytime
I please, peeling layers as if it was a cabbage, examining them as I turn them
around looking at them from all angles, thinking about Amy, Wolgast, Babcock,
Peter, the cold and the constant vigilance against a new deadly enemy that
makes life very hard for anyone who survived the mysterious outbreak. I spent
five weeks of my life on this journey with them so they definitely leave a
trace. This is kind of like Resident Evil Extinction, the constant trekking and
travel while trying to figure out why the world seems to be ending while
surrounded by monsters. I think that’s what
makes books so great, they give you new memories created from someone else’s creative
mind, publicly available but private to you since each person imagines their
own look of the story and if anything a good book makes you do a self search every
time you engage with it. What would you
do at this moment, courage is easy
when faced with death but like the author said, hope, that’s harder to preserve
and carry with you when everything is bleak…
Change is
the only constant thing here. Like with real life, people come and go and ideas
are forgotten but still something survives. Life goes on even when oppressed and
trampled, and this story is the tale of a handful of interesting characters and
their mysterious role, traveling a desecrated world haunted by vampire like
creatures with a very special girl, one who could be a key to it all. It’s hard
to describe exactly what The Passage is, I think people look it up to find out
what the heck is this polarizing popularity surrounding it, then decide to read
it or not. I’ve had it for years but it wasn’t until I ran into my friend Anna’s
review of it that I decided to simply peak at it and read a page, well sixty
pages later I looked up realizing that I’m in for the ride. This has a lot of
interesting elements, MANY characters, some more fleshed out more than others
but only a few that I truly cared about. Don’t be worried that you need to know
them all; the story is so full of death and carnage (even if in background)
that Cronin probably had to create and at the same time obliterate so many
people in it, to give it some heft. We don’t know all the people in the world
yet we feel sorrow when big bad things happen, it’s tough to write so many people
into a tale but it can be a fun and opulent thing to read once in a while. The Passage shows you something that you can
like or love or care about and then it takes it away from you or threatens to
take it all, it’s a grabbing struggle, we can all relate on some level.
Quite often
I feel as if the size of the book matters almost as much as what it’s about,
people can never get over the behemoth amount of pages inside of The Passage, and while it’s not the
largest book I’ve ever seen it almost
needs all of them. Each book and each world that it holds is unique and not
everything will read like a drive down a hill, some boxes need to be larger to accommodate
what’s inside, that said I’m not a diehard fan of let’s say 900+page books unless it’s King or R.R Martin where it’s
never enough, but this was quite well done even if I didn’t love the way it was
written the whole time I read it, there were subtle shifts where the author
felt more natural in his world and some where he had to chisel his way out of
what his mind planned and how he was going to put it on paper. Some action
sequences were a bit scrambled and not realistic in a sense when all the
characters doing the task were miraculously okay…There was a lot of mystery
sprinkled through the pages, even at the end there was still an enigmatic shroud
that should be lifted over the next two books. I did not like the quick insert foreshadowing
that Cronin fancied so much, it would start in the middle of any action at
random, throw you in for a loop, give you info about the future and then bring
you back all ready feeling like you know so and so is okay, backing into the
problem they are facing but decreasing any pressure, almost doing the opposite.
Reading big
meaty books is like climbing a mountain, you get to the top tired, ready to
puke thinking that you never want to move again but after a few moments you mischievously
feel ready for more. The last 150 pages
or so were my favorite and the little cliff hangers were excellent especially when
the next chapter would open with a bang and a well executed one. This reminded
me in a bit of another great read, The Clan of the Cave Bear, it was a lasagna
of characters and their stories that made up life in it. After I finished Passage
I feel like I got to go on a ride with a good buddy, and even though not
perfect ( a word I hate actually) it was
worth the trouble of climbing that paper mountain because the view from the top
of what I just read is breathtaking and I want to see more of it.
- Kasia S.
I like how
this book came to be, Cronin’s little daughter asked for a story and this is
it, labor of love :) and she must have good taste, Conan the Barbarian has been my favorite movie since I've been six.
Merry Christmas to all and Happy Holidays - aka - good reading time!
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