"The Passage"-Justin Cronin

Book Title: The Passage
Author: Justin Cronin
Version: ebook
ISBN: 9780345516862
Published: June 8th, 2010
First Published: January 1, 2010
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Number of Pages: 858
Genre: Dystopian Fiction

REVIEW: This was a long book and a lot happened in it. So much so that I'm not sure what it is that I want to write about and what I want to leave out. With that in mind I am going to skip the synopsis altogether and move on to the review. It was an interesting book, one that I found myself enjoying quite a bit. It had a lot of different flavors mixed in that I enjoyed pulling apart. I felt that it was maybe a tad long for what it was but I enjoyed the richness and fullness of the story.

Justin Cronin's writing was strangely simple but in a good way. There was no overreaching, no trying to get fancier than it was. I enjoyed that aspect of it because although it was simple it was really well done. And the most important part of it was the story was well told. When it comes to a long book the story has to be well told in order for the length to be worth it and this was told very well. For me a great story has to be equal parts character development, description and action, this was a good story in that it had mostly equal parts of everything. The way Mr. Cronin told his story was very well done and I enjoyed it from start to finish.

I found that some of the pieces of the story were familiar to me in the sense that they evoked other works. This was one small negative for me. As much as I enjoyed the story and ultimately the whole book I found myself wishing more of it was a surprise, I don't mean that the plot wasn't new or surprising in a lot of ways, I mean simply that parts of it were exactly like other stories, so much so that I found myself losing what I was reading and instead thinking about what I was reminded of. Other than these few occurances however I have very little to complain about.

Each of the characters, and there were quite a few, were very explicitly described. Even if the characters didn't last very long through out the story they were so full, so rich, so real that even if I only knew them for a little while I found myself fully invested in what happened to them. I really liked that part of the book, that Mr. Cronin took the time to really flesh out his characters no matter how big or small.

All around "The Passage" by Justin Cronin was a really good book. I have the advance of the second in the trilogy "The Twelve" and I am looking forward to seeing what happens next. Justin Cronin has created a world that I really enjoyed spending time in, and it's a world I am anxious to get back to. I look forward to seeing what the next part of this journey is going to be like and I just know that if you go out and pick up "The Passage" you'll get just as wonderfully wrapped up as I did.