Book Review: The Passage by Justin Cronin

Goodreads Summary: "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.

Goodreads Rating: 4.02 stars with over 204000 ratings

Genre Listing: Horror, Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Post Apocalyptic, Vampires, Paranormal, Dystopia, Thriller

Goodreads Challenge: 36/50

2021 Reading Challenge: #6 Read a book that was recommended to you (Find the entire challenge here)

Book Review:

Hi Readers. I hope everyone is doing well. I finally finished a book. I'm so proud of myself. The Passage took me nearly a month to complete. Readers. Let me offer you some advice that you didn't ask for. If you and your spouse both work full time and are in Grad School full time, a 700-page book may not be a quick read. Had I been an intelligent human and looked at the number of pages before I selected this, I would have waited to read The Passage. This was recommended to me by one of my co-workers, who is also a huge bookworm. The sales pitch for it was, "Hey, you like vampires, right?" It doesn't take much for me to want to read a book, honestly. 

I'm not really sure where to go with the review for this one, which is part of why it's taken me four days to get around to writing. I liked The Passage by Justin Cronin. I thought it was an interesting concept. However, I felt like the book was really disjointed. I don't know if it was actually the book or my state of mind right now. Just as soon as I got into a character's story, the Point of View switched. There were so many different views that I just couldn't keep track of all the characters. Once I finally started getting into the story, the timeframe shifted, and it was 100 years in the future. Because of this change, there was a whole new set of characters that I had to get used to. It made it really hard to stay in the moment of whatever was going on.  I felt like I was reading two separate books. 

One big piece of the puzzle that I still feel like I'm missing is the why. That part never really felt clear to me. There was a group of scientists initially, and I don't really understand why they took the actions they did. I don't know if it was to find a cure or some other reason. I never really had a good grasp of why they brought Amy into it. 

All of the confusion aside, I did enjoy the story, as I said earlier. I was more entertained by the dystopian aspect of the story just because things had started to make a little sense by then. I felt more interested in Peter, Theo, Lish, Sarah, and the others in their group than the other characters earlier on. They felt more well-developed to me. Auntie was probably my favorite character in the book, and I wish she would have gotten a little more time in the story. I'm really hoping that her journals at least play a more significant part in the later books. 

I'm keeping this review short today. Overall, I really wish I liked this book more than I did. I don't know if I would have liked it more if I had read it at a different time. I'm not writing off the rest of the series; it just may be a bit before I get into the rest of the books.