Retro Review: The Passage
/When I started this blog, I had been posting reviews on Goodreads for about 6 months. In the interest of having all of my book writing in one place, I will post one of these old reviews every Friday. They weren't written with a blog in mind, so please forgive the lack of summary and off-the-cuff tone.
3 stars. First, the wonderful: the novel is semi-epistolary, which keeps things interesting and provides a larger picture of the events depicted. Considering the expanse of Cronin’s vision, he avoids tripping into tunnel vision by including excerpts from government documents, journals and email correspondence. I don’t always enjoy having all the answers, but in this case, context felt really, really crucial to my understanding of the story. That plus a carefully crafted complex and sophisticated plot left me both satisfied and wanting more.
Now, the weird: first of all, all of the men in this book seem like different versions of the same male character – like the same face drawn in different colors. And the women are incredibly strong and multifaceted, but Cronin misses an opportunity to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the feminist perspective. It isn’t problematic in that sense, but in my opinion it’s lacking.
I should also comment on the writing, which is questionable at times. It’s arrogant and cliffhanger-happy, and Cronin bogs down the prose with details of the setting and romantic subplots (I’m certain this was done intentionally to send a message – but it was not to my taste). Cronin is definitely a master at writing action, but his character's’ internal monologues felt slightly amateur (Peter’s contemplation of Hollis and Sara’s relationship was really tedious to me). There’s melodrama and heavy-handed sentimentality.
Also, be prepared for some ... unusual ... exposition. Like The Terror, another sprawling, layered book that touches on humanity’s place in the world, this story gets more woo-woo as it goes on.
Despite these flaws (flaws may be too strong of a word – I would just refer to them as observations), the accomplishments of The Passage are countless. It is a literary vampire apocalypse story, of which there are many, but it’s also a fresh literary vampire apocalypse story, of which there are few. I will be reading more.