What Am I?
Before she became the Girl from Nowhere—the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years—she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.”
Thus begins Justin Cronin‘s epic, The Passage. Epic at 766 pages. Epic in the scope of the story. Epic, as in: expect some sequels to this modern vampire tale. This is the Stephen King story you’ve been waiting for all these years.
OK, I’m sure there could be people who will be upset by that King comparison. Maybe they would be upset because King Rules! Or maybe they would be upset because they believe Cronin writes on a higher level. After all, Cronin is a literary darling who has picked up a PEN/Hemingway Award, a Stephen Crane Prize, and the Whiting Writer’s Award; while King is the book world’s undisputed, uhh… king of horror and suspense.
I’m not insulting either writer. I employ the comparison for simply one reason: I haven’t felt this way about a horror novel since King’s The Stand. It’s that intense. It’s that good.
Science gone wrong leads to a post-apocalyptic world in both novels, but King’s work is firmly rooted in the ancient supernatural struggle between good (God) and evil (The Devil), while Cronin is content to imply that any seemingly supernatural goings-on (telepathy, blood-lust, near immortality) are qualities of our genes that have perhaps lain dormant for millennia—qualities that have been activated by a scientific experiment to extend the human lifespan. (To say this experiment has military implications isn’t surprising, given the stereotypes of the genre, and it isn’t giving anything away.)
Little Amy is the only subject of this experiment to retain her human identity; the other, older guinea pigs are transformed into creatures that can only be described as vampires. These creatures escape the lab and the world falls around Amy, but she continues to live, aging at a much slower rate. The savage beasts recognize her as one of them, so they do not attack her; and they recognize her as someone who can answer the question their minds continually ask: “What am I?”
Following our introduction to Amy and her transformation into a near immortal, we travel almost 100 years into the future to meet a struggling community of surviving humans. Amy eventually joins the survivors, and travels with them as they seek a way to save their haven. Ultimately she confronts one of the original 12 vampires that were created prior to Amy’s transformation, and events are set in motion that will continue in Cronin’s next two books, The Twelve, and The City of Mirrors.
Like in King’s The Stand, the ultimate payoff in Cronin’s work lies in watching the creation of a new, loving family in a harsh and unforgiving world. If you ask me, you couldn’t ask for anything better after the apocalypse.
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Dig further: Justin Cronin explains his vampires in The Passage, and drops spoilers for the next book.
And there’s gonna be a movie.
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Comments
Excellent, so glad there’s going to be a sequel or two. Lots of unanswered questions, like what Peter is (he doesn’t have the dream of Babcock like everyone else) and what happened to the people of the Colony (and those of Homer, OK). All the time I was reading it, I was thinking what a great movie it would make.
Thanks for the link, Reg!
Meanwhile, on the social networks…
Facebook Friend Richard is also a fan of The Passage. Here’s our conversation, wherein we fault the author’s knowledge of Oklahoma History:
FB Richard: I agree. I finished it last week. I have read many, many post-apocalyptic novels through the years, and seldom find a new one that interesting. I even thought The Road, though well-written, was not very original The Passage is definitely an exception. It kept my interest from beginning to end. Of course the author needed to do a little more background work on Oklahoma history, but I can forgive him one slight anachronism.
YBY: Yeah, those Okies calling their state troopers “staties.” What was *that* all about? LOL. But, Richard, I too forgave him his Sooner ignorance.
FB Richard: My problem was with the date the courthouse was built. I don’t have the book to look it up, but I believe he had it somewhere in the 1850s. I can pretty well guarantee there were no court houses built in Western Oklahoma in the 1850s.
YBY: Oh absolutely! I caught that, too. It really would have been stretching it to have any courthouse standing anywhere in Oklahoma in the 1850s, but placing it in the Western part of the state was especially problematic.
Thanks, Christine. Yep, lots of unanswered questions. And that whole ending with Sara’s Diary was pretty spooky, too!
It hadn’t occurred to me that something truly strange might be going on with Peter since he didn’t have the dreams. Interesting.
Luckily, more will be revealed. (But not until 2012. Waaa!)
There’s a review of this book in a recent issue of Locus. Cronin said the book is a response to his daughter who asked him to write a book where a little girl saves the world. I thought that was pretty cool.
And about King and Cronin:
http://www.suite101.com/content/the-king-praises-the-passage-by-justin-cronin-a259906