Continuous Vivid Dream

I’ve been so disappointed with contemporary fiction lately, giving up on so many novels within 100-150 pages, including Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Dome, Extraordinary Thunderstorms, and Freedom.  My frustration is mostly with the writing style and ridiculous premises, I had little faith I would ever finish the Passage by Justin Cronin, a 800 epic vampire/armageddon/virus novel, supposedly the first of a trilogy.

I must confess The Passage was a pleasant surprise.  The story is nothing new on the most part: terrible virus spreads and ultimately destroys the United States as we know it.  The sufferers of the virus don’t become mindless zombies according to the tradition of these types of stories and movies, and they are not completely mindless.  The virals or vamps spread the virus through a simple bite and can “fly” or jump very high, and are significantly more formidable opponent for the remaining survivors.  These virals can get into your mind and dreams.

A note about good writing: if you can skip entire paragraphs and not lose track of the plot or story, you can tell the writing is below average and contains extraneous, useless detail.  The first two hundred pages of the Passage falls into this category and I was losing faith it would keep me interested.   All the government employees lacked any conscious and felt like a bad episode of Prison Break.  The whole idea behind how the virus was injected into death row inmates to create the super soldier seemed preposterous.  I was about to drop the book at this point.  But Cronin appears to have little loyalty to these characters, and on the most part, all the characters who are in the first 200 pages are old news and not in the other 600.  Thank God.

The majority of the novel revolves around a group of survivors 100 years after the spread of the virus, a group of grown decendants (I picture them in their 20s) who live in an enclosed colony in California.  It’s a unique world (comes with a handy little Colony map) and culture.  And I began to read most of the words.  I found my temptation to jump through paragraphs gone, as the lives of these colonists was good storytelling.  It felt like life without technology in a time after technology.

Cronin brought us into their lives at a crucial point in their existence: the batteries powering the lights that kept them safe were running low and one of the most powerful virals was getting into the colonists’ dreams, breaking down their defenses.

In the spirit of Stephen King’s The Stand, a number of colonists discover Amy, a girl given the virus along with the death row inmates, and learn of their need to journey across the devastated States, to find answers and solutions to mankind’s future.  As readers we know from the beginning how it all began, and the suspense of learning the truth is not as compelling for us.  I wonder if Cronin might have been better off keeping the origin of the virus secret until the end, and I’m sure if this is made into a movie, it will probably be hidden from the viewers like the Bourne Identity trilogy.

The novel ends on a dark note (supposedly one of our key characters appears to die), and it’s not until I searched the web that I learned this is the first of a trilogy.  I can’t complain; though I can’t imagine how Cronin will be able to extend this story into another 1600 pages.  At the end of book 1, we only defeat one of the 12 death row virals.  For all we know, the story will resume 100 years later with all of these characters a distant memory.  I would not put it past this storyteller, and that’s a compliment.   Only two of the characters outside of the Twelve have the virus in their system, which means they could continue to be characters in book 2 and 3.  I’d start it again when these characters are at the ends of their lives, and their children continue the fight.

The Passage has received positive reviews, and they are deserved.  It’s rare when we can pick up a long novel and want to keep reading.  At least I know the frustration of not caring to keep reading.  One lasting memory of this novel is when our traveling colonists stumbled upon a group of survivors living free from the virals in the desert in a penitentiary.  You can tell there is something wrong about it, and the discovery is disturbing and unexpected.  This is the original writing readers are wishing for.