Malazan Empire: The Passage by Justin Cronin - Malazan Empire

Jump to content

Page 1 of 1
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

The Passage by Justin Cronin The $5 million novel

#1 User is offline   Werthead 

  • Ascendant
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 3,540
  • Joined: 14-November 05

Posted 19 April 2010 - 11:48 AM

The year is 2017. The USA is still embroiled in foreign military adventures, New Orleans has turned into a toxic wasteland and Blu-Ray has only just manged to become the dominant entertainment storage medium. A six-year-old girl, Amy Belafonte, is abandoned at a convent by her struggling mother. One of the nuns, Lacey, a former refugee from a war in Africa, realises that something is amiss with Amy, and that she is more than she first appears.

The United States government agrees. In the mountains of Colorado they have established Project Noah, an attempt to develop immortality ("So all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years,") using twelve death row inmates as guinea pigs. The final stage of the experiment requires the use of a young child, so the directors send FBI Agent Wolgast to collect Amy. But the experiment has gone catastrophically wrong, and whilst the first twelve experimental subjects have indeed become immortal, they have also become something else, something that cannot be contained.

Ninety years later, a teenage girl arrives out of the blue at one of the last bastions of civilised humanity in the world, a fortified town in California. Her arrival triggers a dangerous cross-country journey back to the source of the infection, and a series of revelations about the true nature of the threat they face, and how to combat it.

The Passage is still months away from publication, but is already a major success story. The publishing rights for the book and its two sequels were sold for $3.5 million, whilst the film rights were purchased by Ridley Scott's company for a cool $1.5 million for the first book by itself. Based on the book, this is understandable: I have rarely read a book that screams "Blockbuster hit!" as loudly as The Passage. Unusually, however, the book combines its mass commercial appeal with an impressive intelligence and a much stronger writing style than might be expected from a big horror novel (the Stephen King cover quote helps as well). The fact that the 'main' publishers rather than their SF&F imprints are publishing the book is also a sign that they are taking this book very seriously.

The Passage is an evocative novel that borrows and combines styles from other sources to terrific effect. The first third of the novel, in which the virus is released and civilisation falls, is reminiscent of the brilliant opening half of Stephen King's The Stand (although, unlike The Stand, Cronin doesn't badly fumble the ending). We then move ninety years further on to a world of crumbling freeways, unstable overpasses and weed-choked ruins which is much more in the vein of Cormac McCarthy's The Road (albeit nowhere near as sparse). We then get some thrilling battle scenes between humans and 'virals' set in a shopping mall and the surrounding countryside which is much more in the vein of the Fallout computer games (and possibly Dawn of the Dead), whilst the idea of humanity cowering behind walls from the threat beyond recalls Carrie Ryan's recent novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth and its sequel. Yet the book never feels derivative, more playing with the tropes of the post-apocalyptic horror genre in interesting and original ways.

The novel has its own rhythm and cadence, based around rich descriptions of the environment and strong characterisation. The structure of the novel is also successful, with the first third forming an effective prologue to the remaining post-apocalyptic sequence. Initially this move appeared unwise, with Cronin abandoning the well-described situation and memorable characters of the opening of the book to start over from scratch, but the new situation and characters are just as effective, if not moreso (especially Alicia, a devastatingly effective viral hunter, and our main protagonist Peter). This does represent a shift in the pacing, with the first 250 pages rocketing by like a page-turning thriller, whilst the next sequence is more relaxed, but this is necessary to establish the new characters and situation. Then, once the journey into the unknown begins, the pacing and tension ratchet up again. In this latter sequence Cronin gives us a series of episodic adventures, such as the travellers stopping at another settlement built around a ruined prison where nothing is as it seems and a terror-filled journey across Las Vegas, which would make memorable horror novels by themselves, but here are merely smaller parts of a much greater whole.

The novel is but the first part of a trilogy, so whilst the book has definitive end-point and a series of compelling revelations about the setting and the world, there is also something of a cliffhanger ending which we will have to wait some time to see resolved (given it took the author over three years to write this first book, I assume the second is still a while off), which is just about the only negative thing about the book I can think of. Otherwise this is a page-turning, compulsive read.

The Passage (*****) is a superbly-written, well-paced and convincingly-characterised novel where the situation and characters remain in the imagination long after it is finished. This could be the start of something major indeed. The novel will be published on 8 June 2010 in the USA and on 24 June in the UK.
Visit The Wertzone for reviews of SF&F books, DVDs and computer games!


"Try standing out in a winter storm all night and see how tough you are. Start with that. Then go into a bar and pick a fight and see how tough you are. And then go home and break crockery over your head. Start with those three and you'll be good to go."
- Bruce Campbell on how to be as cool as he is
0

#2 User is offline   Abyss 

  • abyssus abyssum invocat
  • Group: Administrators
  • Posts: 21,780
  • Joined: 22-May 03
  • Location:The call is coming from inside the house!!!!
  • Interests:Interesting.

Posted 19 April 2010 - 01:45 PM

Wow... that's a hell of an endorsement Wert'. It got my interest, tho' i suspect i'll wait for the whole thing before acquiring.

And i totally agree with you on The Stand - great start, decent middle, weak ending.

- Abyss, anti-viral.
THIS IS YOUR REMINDER THAT THERE IS A
'VIEW NEW CONTENT' BUTTON THAT
ALLOWS YOU TO VIEW NEW CONTENT
0

#3 User is offline   kcf 

  • High Fist
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 487
  • Joined: 27-May 04
  • Location:Arizona

Posted 09 June 2010 - 05:26 PM

I finished this one up last night - in short, it lives up to the buzz pretty well. It's a good book.

A few excerpts from the review

Quote

In the beginning, Cronin shows of his literary roots, telling the story in heart-wrenching chunks sure to bring tears to the eyes of those so inclined. Some of this section is very hard to read – both as a father and as a human concerned for the direction of our world. Cronin builds both sections of the book in the very literary tradition of dealing with themes of human relationships. The father-daughter relationship is perhaps the most prevalent, but a good bit of time is spent exploring those of father-son, husband-wife, lovers and adoptive families/communities.

Cronin succeeds not only by spinning a vampire apocalypse into a compelling story that needs to be read, but by creating characters that truly live. In the space of only a few lines he shows fully rendered characters. These characters as often unlikeable as they are likeable, but the reader quickly develops a bond with the core group of characters – a bond that carries through the hurts and joys.

The Passage weighs in at a hefty 766 pages in hardback, and this is perhaps its greatest weakness. Some scenes may not be all that necessary, but in the least, a few don’t feel as polished as they should be – The Haven comes to mind as one, though details would be a bit too spoilerish to share. The geologist in me was a bit bothered by the presentation of some of the towns in the future – some fates seem unlikely and make me wonder if Cronin has ever visited these dots on the map. Also a few of the character revelations near the end of the novel – particularly with Alicia – felt rushed or not quite right. The result is a bit uneven, but not so much that it impacts the overall quality of the book.


Full Review
0

#4 User is offline   QuickTidal 

  • Frog
  • Group: Team Quick Ben
  • Posts: 21,339
  • Joined: 05-November 05
  • Location:Nowhere Specific
  • Interests:Nothing, just sitting. Quietly.

Posted 13 June 2010 - 12:44 PM

I saw this in the store, the blurb and Wert's Recommendation have me interested. May pick it up.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora

“Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone.” ~Ursula Vernon
0

#5 User is offline   zpconn 

  • Recruit
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 21
  • Joined: 02-July 10

Posted 18 July 2010 - 06:48 PM

The author is an English professor at my school. I'm going to try to take a creative writing class with him!
0

#6 User is offline   Felisin 

  • Recruit
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 2
  • Joined: 19-September 10

Posted 19 September 2010 - 06:32 PM

It's very well written.

Overall it's a fairly enjoyable, excellent in places esp. the beginning but the story did seem to drag on a bit in the next section.

I hadn't realised it was a trilogy as I thought the ending was a bit of a let down.
0

#7 User is offline   alt146 

  • Here comes the Strongbad!
  • Group: High House Mafia
  • Posts: 827
  • Joined: 29-September 08
  • Location:Pretoria ZA

Posted 19 September 2010 - 06:48 PM

Read this a couple of weeks ago. Not a bad book, but it does tend to go on a little - Cronin spends a lot of time building up characters and then not really doing anything with them. Better than having a bunch of red-shirts maybe, but after the third of fourth time he introduces a new set of ancilliary characters it gets a bit annoying. I can see why the movie rights were snapped up, a movie based on this book would be very cool.
[url="http://www.alt146.zzl.org"]MafiaManager[/url]: My Mafia Modding tool - Now at v0.3b

With great power comes a great integral of energy over time.
0

#8 User is offline   amphibian 

  • Ribbit
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 7,947
  • Joined: 28-September 06
  • Location:Upstate NY
  • Interests:Hopping around

Posted 24 October 2012 - 06:45 PM

Bumping this because I have read the sequel - The Twelve.

TL/DR: Okay, but odd structure, characterization and timing of POVs makes the story, particularly the build-up to the finale, sorta flat.

Going into this second book of a planned three, I was curious as to how Cronin would deal with
Spoiler
Way to veer outside the reader's expectations there, Mr. Cronin.

(The rest requires spoilers)

Spoiler


I'll pick up the third - but probably in paperback and not the hardcover.

This post has been edited by Imperial Historian: 24 October 2012 - 09:52 PM
Reason for edit: This is a review thread for the passage, don't spoil the end of it

I survived the Permian and all I got was this t-shirt.
0

#9 User is offline   worry 

  • Master of the Deck
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 14,564
  • Joined: 24-February 10
  • Location:the buried west

Posted 24 October 2012 - 08:17 PM

View Postamphibian, on 24 October 2012 - 06:45 PM, said:

Bumping this because I have read the sequel - The Twelve.

TL/DR: Okay, but odd structure, characterization and timing of POVs makes the story, particularly the build-up to the finale, sorta flat.

Going into this second book of a planned three, I was curious as to how Cronin would deal with
Spoiler
Way to veer outside the reader's expectations there, Mr. Cronin.

(The rest requires spoilers)

Spoiler


I'll pick up the third - but probably in paperback and not the hardcover.


Ah man, this was one of my big anticipations of the year. I'll still go for it I suppose, but with less of a rush.
They came with white hands and left with red hands.
0

#10 User is offline   amphibian 

  • Ribbit
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 7,947
  • Joined: 28-September 06
  • Location:Upstate NY
  • Interests:Hopping around

Posted 25 October 2012 - 09:51 PM

View Postworrywort, on 24 October 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

Ah man, this was one of my big anticipations of the year. I'll still go for it I suppose, but with less of a rush.

I'm actually kinda pumped for the third given the ending of the second. The characters are in good places for some interesting things to happen.

Cronin really does write like a young Stephen King. This is a good thing - by the way. It might mean that he doesn't reach the stratospheric levels of other authors we are used to, but it might mean that his books sell by the truckload - which is good for SF and other associated authors.
I survived the Permian and all I got was this t-shirt.
0

#11 User is offline   worry 

  • Master of the Deck
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 14,564
  • Joined: 24-February 10
  • Location:the buried west

Posted 25 October 2012 - 10:19 PM

View Postamphibian, on 25 October 2012 - 09:51 PM, said:

View Postworrywort, on 24 October 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

Ah man, this was one of my big anticipations of the year. I'll still go for it I suppose, but with less of a rush.

I'm actually kinda pumped for the third given the ending of the second. The characters are in good places for some interesting things to happen.

Cronin really does write like a young Stephen King. This is a good thing - by the way. It might mean that he doesn't reach the stratospheric levels of other authors we are used to, but it might mean that his books sell by the truckload - which is good for SF and other associated authors.


Yah I definitely agree with that comparison. And if this book is good but just has a case of middle book syndrome/place-setting, then I'll probably enjoy it. I just probably won't buy it at new hardcover price.
They came with white hands and left with red hands.
0

#12 User is offline   Werthead 

  • Ascendant
  • Group: Malaz Regular
  • Posts: 3,540
  • Joined: 14-November 05

Posted 04 November 2012 - 12:09 PM

The Twelve

Quote

The early years of the 22nd Century. North America is crawling with 'virals', creatures of superior strength and stamina who feed on human blood and flesh. Most are unintelligent, but they are controlled by 'the Twelve', the original death-row inmates who were experimented upon to create the virals. Standing against them is Amy, the Girl From Nowhere, and her allies, a military force based in Texas.


The death of one of the Twelve has also resulted in the destruction of the virals he created. This reveals the path to victory and survival: kill the Twelve and end the viral threat forever. But this is easier said than done. After five years of failed assassinations the military are ready to abandon the mission, and only one last attempt can be made.

With millions of copies sold, translations in forty languages published and the film rights bought for a very high amount, The Passage was one of the biggest success stories of 2010. The Twelve is the direct sequel and the middle volume of a proposed trilogy (the final volume, City of Mirrors, is due in 2014). However, Cronin has gone to some lengths to try to avoid 'middle volume syndrome' by giving the book a number of self-contained narratives and character arcs whilst also continuing the story of Peter, Alicia, Amy and the other survivors of the First Colony and their war against the Twelve.

The Twelve contains much of the same that made The Passage a good book: good characterisation, evocative descriptions and a rich atmosphere. It improves on it in several areas as well. It's a notably shorter (by some 200 pages), more concise and more focused book with every chapter building up to the conclusion. The Twelve does repeat The Passage's structure of having an opening section (in this case the first third of the novel) depicting the fall of civilisation before moving to the post-apocalyptic 'present day'. There are numerous self-contained stories in this section which are compelling reads, but initially appear a little disconnected from the post-apocalyptic storyline. However, Cronin eventually loops most of these storylines back to the main story and explains their relevance.


The biggest problem The Twelve faces, which is much more present than The Passage, is that of adhering to the traditional post-apocalyptic, 'big showdown' type of storyline whilst trying to surprise a reader familiar with the rules and tropes of such storylines. Now the rules of this particular type of vampire/zombie story have been set, Cronin shows a surprising inability to surprise or startle the reader any more. Things proceed pretty much as you might expect them to: some reversals, a few capture-and-escape sequences and then a big explosive finale (literally, with some huge explosions and shoot-outs) and something of a happy ending, until the inevitable final chapter which ends on a cliffhanger note leading into the final volume.

This predictability extends to the villains, with the rulers of the human/viral colony being rather rape-happy towards their prisoners. Whilst the issue isn't simply tossed in for the sake of it (as it would have been in, say, a Stephen King book) and is treated seriously, it's still a disappointing cliche to indulge in, especially as otherwise the treatment of the female characters is highly positive (three of the primary POVs - Alicia, Amy and Sara - are all female and are the most well-developed characters in the book).

The Twelve (****) is a very solid read, with Cronin's skills with character and prose being undiminished and even a tad improved from the first volume. However, the storyline is a lot more straightfoward, and the book shows a general decline towards predictability and cliche - though well-written - which is disappointing. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Visit The Wertzone for reviews of SF&F books, DVDs and computer games!


"Try standing out in a winter storm all night and see how tough you are. Start with that. Then go into a bar and pick a fight and see how tough you are. And then go home and break crockery over your head. Start with those three and you'll be good to go."
- Bruce Campbell on how to be as cool as he is
0

Share this topic:


Page 1 of 1
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

1 User(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users