The last genre novel that got this much hype was The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, and it was crap. But this one might actually be okay.
From the NY Times article:
"So far, booksellers have expressed early and passionate enthusiasm. “The Passage” was chosen as an Indie Next List pick for June; Library Journal predicted that the book would be one of the most popular novels of the year; and Publishers Weekly raved, “Fans of vampire fiction who are bored by the endless hordes of sensitive, misunderstood Byronesque bloodsuckers will revel in Cronin’s engrossingly horrific account of a postapocalyptic America.”
“This is one of the better instances of someone taking the time to do popcorn fiction right in recent memory, and every time the book threatens to sag under the weight of Cronin’s more literary conceits, he introduces interesting insights into how the people in the far future survive in a world ravaged by vampires of the monstrous, non-sexy variety, or produces an action sequence involving those vampires loping after a runaway train with humanity’s last, best hope for survival on board. The Passage is paced oddly, but not poorly. Cronin never does the expected, but that becomes a virtue as the book unleashes beautiful payoffs in its latter moments.”
I’m stoked. The book will be released June 8. A trilogy is planned.
I’m really excited for this, but we just did the “Fans of vampire fiction who are bored by the endless hordes of sensitive, misunderstood Byronesque bloodsuckers will revel in Cronin’s engrossingly horrific account of a postapocalyptic America” thing. It was released last year and it was called The Strain and it was written by film director Guillermo Del Toro. It’s also part of a planned trilogy with Part 2 scheduled for release this Fall.
It is very odd that Cronin wrote this. His earlier works are very literary. I started to read one of his novels because I read about him in the Rice University newspaper (he’s a Lit prof. there). Dry stuff. I’ll give this a try.
I’d forgotten about that book. Is it any good? I took a pass on it. I love del Toro’s films but I’m leery of shelling out for a novel. Especially when he raved about Stephen King’s Under the Dome, which I thought was awful.
Maybe a lot of people (like me) thought of it as a movie tie-in, even though there’s been no movie yet. I didn’t take it seriously, probably because I think of del Toro as a director, not a writer.
I imagine the book will be back in people’s minds when the movie comes out.
That’s the weird thing though. There’s never been even one hint that The Strain is going to be a movie. yet, everyone assumes there will be just because he’s a director. It’s odd.
The Passage sounds interesting. I’ll keep an eye on the reviews.
Unfortunately, I really, really disliked Del Toro’s The Strain, to the point where I read 2/3rds of it and didn’t bother finishing it. It read like a movie treatment to me, paper thin in every aspect. But your mileage may vary.
The only thing I remember about the Strain is feeling like there were some really big plot points that went unaddressed. I read it when it came out, so now I don’t remember the specifics of what annoyed me.
Passage looks great, put it on hold at the library
I’m about 400 pages into The Passage and, while it’s pretty good so far and certainly epic, I’d lower your expectations, if I were you.
Granted I’m reading an uncorrected proof, but I have to say the story tends to drag in places. Maybe this was corrected by an editor, but if it wasn’t for the rave reviews of this novel, I’m not so sure I’d even finish it. One of my main complaints is that while Cronin’s story has a very large cast of characters, he tends to use very ordinary names for many of them and it’s hard to remember who everyone is at certain points. In fact, you might want to jot down the name of each character along with a quick description as you read the book. I wish I had.
Also, Cronin isn’t much of a writer, I’m afraid; his style is rather pedestrian and downright clunky in places. There are plenty of typos, too (a character “wretches” into the snow at one point) but, again, this might have been corrected for the finished product.
Still, the glowing reviews from just about everyone who’s read the thing has me hopeful that it will turn out to be something really special. I’m not trying to be negative but, so far, I think the this might just be a tad overrated.
By the way, I couldn’t get through 100 pages of the godawful Kostova book a few years ago. That thing was just awful. Pages and pages of characters sitting around reading letters written by other characters who sat around and read letters by someone else. I shudder at the memory of that boring book!
I persevered for almost 600 pages. I stopped when a major plot point was explained by alcohol-induced amnesia. To quote a witty Doper in that thread: “Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.”
Is there something about genre novels, especially horror novels, that make reviewers go nuts when the book is just average?
By the way, there is one majorly irritating aspect to The Passage, something that I don’t think I’ll be alone in pointing out. In the future, all the characters (who seem to speak with the same voice) use the word ‘flyer’ as an exclaimation. As in, “Flyers, I can’t believe we missed the exit!” or “Flyers, you just scared the heck out of me!”
They say this a lot and it’s wince-inducing each and every time. My copy just may go “flying” across the room if I have to put up with much more of this!
Just finished this - I so wanted to love it. It has all the elements I love - vampires! End of the World! Futuristic post apocolyptic societies!
I hated the metaphysical bits (dreaming links, “the many”, Babcock ad nauseum), the saintly nun and the special little girl. I thought the ending was a hot mess.
I know it must sound weird, but I like my vampires to be more…realistic. Sure, I’m willing to buy into government experiments and vampires unleashed to wreak havoc, but I hate all the metaphysical bullshit. It’s like so many Stephen King books - great start, then it just goes off into La La Land.
