The Passage by Justin Cronin - Book Review

A journey into post-apocalyptic world in the not so distant future is every dystopia fiction fans dream come true, and every humans worst nightmare.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

Amy Harper Bellafonte is six years old and her mother thinks she's the most important person in the whole world.

She is.

Anthony Carter doesn't think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row.

He's wrong.

FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming.

It is.

THE PASSAGE.

I will start this review with a warning; this book is not for everyone, but if you are not faint hearted and start with The Passage it may just consume your life.

I first heard about this book more than a year ago from some colleagues at where I worked at the time, The Passage was being talked about everywhere; top of the best sellers in WHSmiths, raved about by all that read it, warnings about its complex dystopian themes but no one could quite tell me about what it was about. Because of this I never found the time for this great volume of a novel. But a couple of months ago I had some money in my Amazon account and the cover reached out to me from my black and white Kindle screen begging to be read.

This is not a short read, and all the better for it. It covers more than a 100 years from the perspective of a spiralling cast of protagonists, each one with their own back stories and rich lives revealed to you when the time is right. The narrative is weaved by these rich characters in a ever more complicated web, and when the final destination finally reveals itself you are dragged rather than being allowed to follow them on their quest.

More than once trapped within its pages I couldn't possibly see where it would take me next. It felt like the dooms day was upon them and they would never last the night, until something happens that allows them to continue their journey. 

This review is deliberately vague to allow anyone who has not read this yet to discover its secrets in the way Cronin intended, as the result is a modern masterpiece.

9/10

If you want to read short teaser of this book, it was my last weeks Teaser Tuesday. I have never read anything like this before, and would recommend it to anyone who loves a rich gritty and unique narrative, but has the stamina to stick with this 1,000+ page novel, hence loosing a point in my rating for its length.

I would love to speak with anyone who has read The Passage to discuss the finer points of this fabulously complex book. More so, I would love to discover what the second book in the series, The Twelve , has to offer and will do as soon as I can!

Thanks for reading,

Love Rie x